Chapter 16

Saturday, the 28th of July 1984. Dad and I dressed in our suits and climbed into the car for the trip to Blessed Sacrament church. Mom stayed behind, her official reason being that someone had to stay with Tracy. This was only an excuse and everyone knew it. Tracy's cast had been removed and she was now able to hobble around on the braces that had been installed. She was starting physical therapy the following Monday and would no longer need an ambulance to take her places. Tracy would have been perfectly fine by herself but no one questioned Mom's decision. If anyone had, perhaps the real reason she wasn't going would have come flying out of her mouth and with it, an entire can of worms. Nobody wanted that.

So we drove in silence, stifling in our suits, alone in the car. We arrived at Blessed Sacrament and were led to the bride's side of the church by an usher. Blessed Sacrament is perhaps the nicest church in the Spokane area. It is an impressive, gothic structure with expensive stained-glass windows, a towering ceiling, and an actual belfry. Anita's wedding in my previous life, for reasons that I could not fathom, had not been held there. It had been held at a park. I wasn't much of a church-going person - never had been, never would be - but I'd been inside it a few times before recycling on calls. People had a strange tendency to pass out during church services, don't ask me why, but any paramedic can attest to this. We used to joke that maybe the person was having a moment of religious doubt and a vengeful God had showed them the error of their ways in dramatic fashion.

It looked much more festive on that day than it ever had when I'd come to revive someone. Flowers were everywhere, filling the air with their perfume. An organist was playing religious hymns at soft volume, keeping everyone in the proper mood. Photographers and a man with a video camera moved here and there, snapping and filming away. The pews were about half-filled, mostly with people we didn't know. I recognized a few of the real estate agents from my trip to Anita's office and hoped that none of them would recognize me. I didn't think they would. If I'd left an impression at all on any of them it would have been as a boy bundled in a down jacket and wearing a ski hat. I doubted they would equate that image with the nicely dressed young man they saw before them now.

The ceremony began. The organist kicked up the volume a little and Jack Valentine made his entrance accompanied by his best man. They were dressed in matching tuxedos and he looked very distinguished, very worldly as he marched down the aisle and took his position near the minister.

And then Anita made her entrance. She was truly beautiful in her flowing white dress and veil, her hair done just right. Her father, I knew, was no longer a part of this Earth so in his place she was accompanied down the aisle on the arm of Ryan, her young son who was dressed cutely in a tuxedo of his own. Her maid of honor and bridesmaids trailed behind her. Her daughter held the trailing edge of her dress.

Like graduations, weddings are usually much more fun to anticipate than they are to actually witness. The minister went on and on for nearly twenty minutes about love and respect and nurturing before he got to the wedding vows. These went on for nearly ten minutes though they were admittedly well written. Another ten minutes of talking, lecturing, and praying occurred before we got to the good part; the part that ended with, "you may kiss the bride". Jack did and we moved on to part two, the reception.

Enders Hall was a large, multi-purpose building that had been designed with wedding receptions in mind. Tables were scattered throughout it with pink tablecloths adorning them and little cards with the names of the guests printed on them. A four-piece band played softly in one corner of the room. An open bar was set up in another corner. In yet another corner was a large table where the wedding gifts were being stacked. We placed the punchbowl set that Mom had purchased on the table and then went and found our seats.

Dad got himself a beer and me a coke while I chatted with our table companions, two of Anita's co-workers, one of whom had been present the day I'd visited the office. She showed no sign of recognizing me. When she asked how I knew Anita I told her I was a neighbor that used to cut her lawn and watch her kids on occasion.

We all took our turns kissing the bride and shaking the hand of the groom. When Dad and I approached, Anita made the introductions tonelessly, without the slightest hint of what I had once been to her. As I kissed her cheek I remembered the days when I used to kiss her everywhere, when I used to make love to her on her bed, in her shower, when I used to put my head between her legs. Anita had still never been topped in the bedroom department. I knew Jack was a happy man.

"Congratulations, Anita," I told her sincerely. "I'm very happy for you."

"Thank you, Bill," she replied, her eyes meeting mine. "I'm very happy too."

Champagne was poured, toasts were made, and the band kicked up the volume and the pace. Dancing was started. Anita danced with Jack, with Jack's best man, with her son, with several others. Finally she approached me and grabbed my hand.

"Care for a dance with the bride?" she asked lightly.

I looked at her for a moment and then said, "Of course." I stood and we went to the dance floor.

We grabbed each other's hands and began to move to the music, swinging our hips. Around us, other combinations of couples were doing the same. Anita was smiling at me nervously and I wondered just why she had done this. A part of me was afraid she was going to ask me to resume our previous relationship despite her marriage.

"I haven't had a chance to talk to you," she said quietly, "since that last day. That day you came over to my house."

I nodded carefully. "I thought it best if we didn't."

"And you were right," she told me. "I wanted to tell you I was sorry for the way I acted on those last few weeks. That I'm ashamed of what I said to you, what I did, how desperate I was. Very ashamed. And I appreciate your discretion in keeping your mouth closed about it all of this time. When I look back on those times..." She shook her head sadly. "I just wanted to let you know that I understand what you did and why you did it, from the very first day we... you know, to the very last day when you had to come and explain the facts of life to me."

"You don't have to apologize or explain anything Anita," I told her. "It's me who is very sorry for doing such a sleazy thing in the first place. I've grown up since then and I'll never do that to anyone again. I'm glad you met someone to love, who loves you."

She offered me a strange smile. "Yes," she said. "Jack and I seemed meant for each other. We're very happy." A pause. "But something bothers me."

"What's that?"

"You knew his name," she said. "On our last night together, you asked me about him. You asked me by name. How did you know, Bill? How did you know?"

We continued to dance while I considered my actions. "I can't tell you, Anita. It's too difficult to fathom anyway. Let's just say that you and Jack were fated to be married and that I almost screwed that up by interfering. But now things are right and I'm very happy for you."

"Thank you," she said.

I led her over to the edge of the dance floor and positioned my body so that nobody could see what we were doing. I reached into the inner pocket of my suit jacket and withdrew a wrapped package. It was long and skinny, the box originally designed to hold a set of drumsticks. I handed it to her.

"What's this?" she asked, taking it.

"I was going to slip it into the wedding gifts," I said. "The card simply says it's from 'fate'. It's something I thought you might like to have. You can do with it what you wish of course but after talking to you, I think you deserve to get it personally."

She looked at me for a moment, her mouth open to ask another question. She closed it, the question unasked, and began to open the wrapping paper. She slid the box out and lifted the lid, peering at what I had for her. She stared for a long time, her eyes wide.

Inside the box was the coil wire I'd taken from her car on the day I lured Jack and her to the house. I don't know why I kept it. I should've just thrown it away, its job done. But I hadn't. I'd taken it out of my jacket pocket and put it in my closet until the day before.

"Is that... ?" she asked slowly.

"A coil wire," I confirmed.

"Then you were the one..." She stared at me, eyes wide. "You?"

I shook my head. "Not me. Fate. And only fate, Anita. Enjoy your marriage. I wish you all the best. I really do."

I walked away from her with a smile on my face, leaving her to quickly shove the coil wire back into the box and hide it. Shortly after that, Dad and I left. Anita moved away from her house after returning from her honeymoon. A rental company took over management of it. I never saw her again. But I'd achieved closure to that part of my life and that was what was important.

When we got home Mom was listening to the radio and working on some paperwork. Though she'd worked at home during her absence from her job during Tracy's recuperation, she was apparently still far behind. Rarely did we see her without a sheaf of papers and computer printouts before her. She asked us about the ceremony and seemed genuinely interested in our answers. I asked where Tracy was, since I had not seen her in her room, and was told that she was in the back yard, practicing her walking.

I went upstairs and changed out of my suit, replacing it with a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. By the time I finished and emerged from my room, Mom and Dad were both missing, their bedroom door tightly shut. Like most kids I pained myself not to speculate too much on just what they were doing in there but like most adults I realized the effect that attending weddings tended to have. I was feeling such an effect myself.

I gave Nina a call, hoping we could get together for a bit but this idea was shot down the instant I got her on the phone. An aunt from Moses Lake was visiting for the day, had come specifically to see Nina and give her a late graduation gift. Nina was trapped at home for the foreseeable future. With a sigh I helped myself to one of my Dad's beers and wandered out to the back yard where Tracy was before I was forced to hear any noise drifting out of Mom and Dad's room.

Our back yard was typical for the period in which our house was built. Considerably larger than what tract houses come with today, it was landscaped with the bare essentials. There was a large lawn, an elm tree that was large enough to climb in if you wished (and that dumped an incredible amount of leaves to the ground each fall), some brick flowerbeds that my mother had rose bushes planted and growing wild in. There was a small cement patio with a cover over it. A barbecue and some simple patio furniture sat upon it. Dad had often talked about installing a swimming pool and a hot tub but had never become quite financially irresponsible enough to actually do it. A pity.

Tracy was wearing a college T-shirt and a pair of shorts. Her right leg was clamped into a set of metal braces that looked like something out of the Spanish Inquisition. A large, metal cane apparatus was attached to her right arm and helped support her weight as she ambled along. She was dripping sweat, her face running with it, her T-shirt stained with it, and her face was scrunched in a painful expression as she hobbled in what appeared to be a circular course around the old elm tree where Mike and I had once built a tree-fort thirty feet above the ground.

"How's it going, Trace?" I asked her, grabbing a seat at the table and setting my beer down next to a glass of ice water that Tracy had put there. A fly had fallen into the water and was struggling weakly between two ice cubes.

"Hey," she hailed, changing course immediately and heading my way. "This hurts like hell. But not as much as when I first tried it. I'm getting better I think. But I'm ready for a break now. More than ready." She wiped sweat from her brow, moving her damp hair from her forehead. "How was the wedding?"

"Boring," I answered, "like all weddings. But I was glad to go. It's nice to see that Anita is happy. We also had a chance to have a little talk."

"Oh?" she said, hobbling over and sitting down, unclipping her cane and putting it aside. It slid down the length of the chair and clattered to the cement loudly. She gave it an irritated look and then chose to ignore it. She reached for her glass and spotted the fly. Her face wrinkled in disgust. "Gross," she declared.

"I'll get you some fresh water," I offered, standing up and picking up the glass.

"I'd rather have one of those beers," she told me.

"Have this one." I slid mine across the table to her. By the time I returned from the kitchen with a fresh one for myself, half of it was already empty. By the time I finished telling her about the wedding and my conversation with Anita, it was completely empty.

She burped in an unladylike way. "So you actually gave her back the coil wire you took?" she asked me wonderingly. "Why did you do that?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't even know why I kept the thing in the first place. Some impulse."

"Impulse huh?" she smiled cynically. "I think you just like to be dramatic."

I didn't dispute that this might be the reason. We sat in silence for a minute or two, watching the butterflies attacking Mom's roses.

"So will you be ready to go back to school in September?" I enquired.

"I'm going whether I'm ready or not," she said firmly, with determination. "I need to get back on track if I'm going to get my undergraduate degree in three years."

I nodded. "That's what Nina's intending to do too. I'm gonna give it a shot, after all, most of the general Ed classes should be pretty easy, but I'll also be working. If it's too much, I'll drop back on the pace a little."

"Not me," Tracy said. "Full steam ahead for me. I plan to take the BAR exam in 1989, 1990 at the latest."

I shrugged. "I wouldn't worry. Corporate America will still be there whenever you finish."

She looked at me for a moment, her face serious. She picked up her beer bottle as if to take a drink and then saw it was empty. She set it back down. I was about to go get her another when she said, "I'm going to change my focus off of business and corporate law."

"To what?"

She sighed. "I've had a lot of time to think while I've been recuperating from this. More time than I've ever wanted. What the hell else is there to do? I've been thinking about fate and consequences and free will and drunk cab drivers." She shook her head angrily. "And it's the drunk cab driver that keeps coming back to me. He was out there driving a goddamn cab after two DUIs. He was licensed both by the State of Nevada and the State of California to do that. For what he did to me he's getting ninety days in jail. Ninety fucking days! What kind of shit is that?"

"It's just life, fate, the American way?" I answered. "Whatever you want to call it. I'm just glad you lived through it, that you're still here to bitch about the injustice of it."

"Fuck that," she said. "Fuck fate and fuck everything. That asshole should not have been driving anything, especially not a taxi. Our system allowed this to happen and it's wrong. It's wrong!"

"Yes," I agreed, "it is."

"So I'm going to focus on criminal law," she said. "I want to try and put some of these assholes in jail. I want to do everything I can to try to stop things like this, or worse things, things like what was supposed to be, from happening time and time again. Not just drunk driving, although that will have special attention from me, but every other crime that's under-treated by the system, that's allowed to perpetuate itself because of apathy."

I felt a chill going up my spine as she spoke. She was talking about becoming a victim's rights advocate. Did she realize this? There were ramifications here, serious ones. I took a long drink of my beer. "That's uh... very uh... noble, Trace," I managed to say.

"I've had a life-changing experience," she said softly. "I'm still alive when I should be dead, even after having the accident I was fated to have." She looked at me. "I can see that some of the thoughts I've been having about fate are occurring to you too."

She did realize the ramifications. No slouch was my sister. "Sometimes," I said, "this whole thing just scares the crap out of me. Before I came back I was pretty much an atheist. I didn't believe in anything. But now, I'm forced to concede that something is at work behind the scenes here. I don't know if it's the Christian God, or Allah, or Buddha, or something that nobody has even conceived of before, but there is a definite power at work here."

She nodded. "I know what you mean. When I decided to go into criminal law and to fight for victims, when I actually decided that, it was almost like I felt something click, like I felt some gears that had been out of alignment sliding back in. I imagine I'll be doing whatever it was that Mom and Dad were supposed to do but didn't, or won't be I should say. I feel like things are, if not exactly right, at least copasetic. The accident has happened and as a result of it someone is getting involved in victim's rights. The stress on the system is relieved."

"So you should be reasonably safe?" I asked.

She chuckled a little. "I still won't be getting into any cars with drunk drivers if it's all the same to you, but yeah, I feel like I'm safe."

We watched the butterflies for a few minutes, me finishing off my beer.

"What about Mike?" I asked her. "He's on a completely different path, so am I for that matter. Anita is back where she should be, Nina is still going to be an emergency room doc, albeit a decidedly less bitchy one, so there's no great stress on the system in those cases. But what about Mike and I?"

She thought for a moment. "Well, like I told you before, I believe that fate is nodal, which means that the longer the insult to it has gone on, the more likely it is that it will be tolerated. I think the evidence we've seen so far seems to confirm that theory. From what you've told me, Mike is completely off of his former track. He doesn't even smoke grass anymore. Like you said, he's matured to the point that he's no longer capable of making the mistake that led to his former life. He's graduated from school, he's signed up for college classes, he has a job, he has a girlfriend. Fate has apparently accepted the new Mike and allowed for him. It probably would have done the same in my case eventually but I was a much stronger stress to the system and stumbled into the right set of circumstances. Fate seized the chance to correct things. The accident relieved the stress on the system as well as it could without actually killing me."

"And me?" I asked. "What about me? I must've stressed the shit out of the system. I'm not in the career I'm supposed to be in, I'm not marrying the person I'm supposed to, I'm not having the child I'm supposed to, and, if all goes well, I will be much wealthier than I'm supposed to be. How does all that fit in?"

She rubbed her ribcage a little, massaging away the tenderness that still plagued her from the accident. "You're a special case," she said.

"How so?"

"You've never had any inclinations at all to stray back onto your previous path, have you?"

"No," I said. "None."

"No strange urges to go to paramedic school, to major in history in college, to dump Nina and go find, what was her name?"

"Lisa," I answered. "And no, nothing like that."

She nodded thoughtfully. "I believe that you probably stressed the system so badly and so rapidly just by the mere fact that you came back to 1982 with your knowledge intact, that it was forced to simply accept your presence. In effect, it simply gave up on trying to divert you since it was basically hopeless. It could try to divert the other paths that you intersected, but not you. It wouldn't be possible for you to deliberately make all of the same twists and turns along your way, particularly when the consequences were unpleasant."

"That makes sense," I told her, marveling at her insight into this metaphysical subject. "It makes a lot of sense."

"Has it ever occurred to you," she asked, "that this might not be your first trip back to 1982 and beyond?"

"What?"

"Didn't think of that, did you?" she smiled. "You were fated to meet the old man on that day, the day before you came back. What was it you said to him when he asked what your greatest wish was?"

"To be fifteen again, knowing what I know now," I answered, not quite getting her.

"Suppose you hadn't answered that way," she suggested. "Suppose you'd simply answered, to be fifteen again, leaving out the last part. That's a perfectly natural response to that question under those circumstances, wouldn't you say? In fact, adding the last part is a little bit strange if you think about it. So suppose you did just say, fifteen again. Boom, you would've found yourself a teenager again with no idea of your former life, with no knowledge of your future mistakes or my impending death."

Another shiver went up my spine as I considered this. It was a frightening thing she was suggesting.

"You would have caused absolutely zero stress to the system," Tracy went on, "and you simply would have continued along as before - marrying Lisa, grieving for me, having Becky, getting divorced - until eventually you would have come to the convalescent home and the old man again with nothing changed. You would have responded the same way and been sent right back again, starting over. For all we know, you might've been doing the same seventeen year stretch of your life over and over again for the past ten thousand years."

Frightening became staggering as I envisioned my poor self endlessly living through the same events, some of them quite tragic, over and over again without memory of it each time. Was such a thing possible? Of course it was. At least as possible as Mr. Li sending me back in the first place.

"Wow," I said softly. "But why would this time have been different?"

"Maybe there are little things that fate can't control," she answered. "Maybe some part of you was aware of what was happening, some part buried deep in your subconscious and it caused that little add-on to slip out at the moment of truth. The cycle gets broken. You could also have wished for world peace or a million bucks or something like that. Thankfully for me, if that's what the case is, you didn't. You added, knowing what I know now. That's what made everything possible. You get to move on past 1999 now."

"That's a truly bizarre and terrifying thought," I told her, trying to shake off the feelings that this discussion had given me. Leave it to Tracy to make you think that you might be ten or twenty thousand years old and had barely escaped from some eternal feedback look in the time-space continuum by the addition of five little words on the end of a sentence. "Well, if it's true and I'm free at last, at least I'll finally get to see how all the Y2K crap is going to come out."

She looked at me strangely. "Y2K?"

"It's not important," I said. "Just be sure to keep your computer system updated come the late nineties."

She seemed about to say something else but didn't. We watched the butterflies again.

"Where are Mom and Dad anyway?" she asked me. "Dad usually comes to check on me fifty or sixty times a day."

I gave a sour look. "They're uh... in their bedroom."

"In their bedroom? Doing what?"

I gave her the look that one gives someone when they've asked an incredibly stupid question. "Well I don't know, Tracy, they didn't clear their itinerary with me. But the door is closed."

A comical expression of disgust came across her face. "Oh my God, you mean..." She shook her head violently. "I'm not gonna think about this. I'm changing the subject. How's Nina?"

I grinned, amused by her discomfort. "Nina's fine except for being trapped at home by an aunt. As a matter of fact I wanted to talk to you about that very subject."

"Oh?"

"I bought her an engagement ring."

Tracy registered absolutely no surprise at this revelation. "Is it a nice one?" she asked.

"Reasonably," I assured her.

"When are you going to offer it to her?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about," I said. "I need a good, female perspective on this. You see, the first time I got married, you know, before, there was no proposal. We simply decided it made good financial sense."

"That's sad," my sister commented.

"Yeah," I replied, "it was. Lisa didn't get an engagement ring until about six months after we were married. She only wanted it because her wedding ring looked 'lonesome' without one. So we went down to a jewelry shop together, bought one with our joint checking account, and had it soldered on. Not very romantic."

"No," Tracy agreed wholeheartedly.

"I want this to be different. I want it to be something she'll always remember, something she'll tell her friends, our kids, our grandkids about. Do you see?"

She was beaming. "Oh yes," she replied, "I know exactly what you're talking about. Let me think." She thought for a minute. "Well of course you simply have to drop the ring into a glass of champagne."

"A glass of champagne?" I asked, wondering if Tracy's perspective was the right one to tap after all. "Isn't that cliché?"

"No," she said firmly, "it's what we all want. Trust me."

"I'll give it some thought," I said doubtfully.

"But for the set-up for it," she said next, "consider this: A hot-air balloon ride."

That actually sounded a little more interesting. "Go on."

"They have champagne balloon rides outside Coeur d' Alene. You can book private flights where there's only the pilot. When you break out the champagne up at six thousand feet, you can make that your moment." She shivered a little as she considered it. "That would be the ultimate."

The balloon thing seemed like a good idea at first and I mulled it over for the rest of the day. I considered things like whether or not Nina was afraid of heights (I'd never bothered to ask her this), whether the presence of the balloon pilot would intrude upon the atmosphere of the occasion, and what would happen if I accidentally dropped the ring out of the balloon from six thousand feet over some farmer's back forty. I decided that more research was in order.

The next day Nina, Mike, Maggie, and myself went on another ski trip, this time to Coeur d' Alene Lake, which, while smaller than Pend Oreille, was considerably closer. I managed to get Maggie to myself for a little bit about halfway through the day, while Mike was dozing on a picnic blanket and Nina was off trying find a private place to pee. I posed my question to her as we waded in waist-deep water near the beached boat, drinking cans of beer.

"You're gonna ask her to marry you?" she squealed happily.

"Christ, Maggie," I scolded. "You think maybe you could yell it a little louder? The people on the golf course across the lake didn't quite understand you."

"Sorry," she said, "but it's so exciting. Congratulations." She stepped forward and gave me a hug, allowing her wet, bikini-clad breasts to push into my bare chest. There was no overt sexuality behind it, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't pleasurable.

"So what do you think?" I asked her once we'd broken apart. "What's the most romantic proposal scheme you can come up with?"

She smiled sexily. "Well, a traditionalist would suggest putting the ring in a glass of champagne."

"Again with the champagne," I muttered.

"But I'm not a traditionalist," she continued. "I think the best way would be to take her out to a nice dinner in a romantic restaurant. You know, a dressy place with wine and a snooty maitre 'd and all that. Order some expensive food, some expensive wine, set up the mood. But don't give her the ring there."

"Not there?"

"No," she shook her head, "that's just the set-up. After dinner, you find someplace to be alone. You know, alone?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Then you start kissing her. You kiss her lips, her cheeks, you nibble on her ears, you kiss your way down her shoulder and across her arm. Ideally she would have on a strapless dress for this occasion. If you could arrange that, so much the better."

"Of course."

"So, anyway, you continue down her arm, just kissing and making her generally hot." She gave me a knowing look. "I know you know how to do that. When you make it to her hand, her left hand, you surreptitiously remove the ring from your pocket or whatever and slip it into your mouth. You kiss her fingers and then take the ring finger and start sucking on it. Then, using only your mouth, you put the ring on her finger." She sighed as she thought about this. Uncomfortably, I could see that her nipples had hardened. "What do you think?"