Chapter 3

Ellie and I had been together for only the three days. We had just made love, for the very first time. And now, I was telling her that I would be away for the coming weekend.

Just like that.

Why? Well, I explained, I had to go to Atlanta, "on business."

What, exactly, was my business? Ellie, reasonably enough, wanted to know. I was a 26-year-old man. I was, presumably, a junior executive somewhere, or had some other entry-level position suitable for a recent college graduate. Ellie and I had been intimate, but we hadn't spent much time sharing the details of our lives. I knew a little about hers; not much, but more by far than she knew about mine.

It was natural that I would know more than she did. After all, I was making mine up as I went along.

But the Atlanta trip, I knew, was essential. I had to see my daughters -- or at least, one of them. I had to find out if they would see me -- the old me -- or whether, when they came to their front door to respond to the doorbell, they'd think I was a young man selling magazine subscriptions, or perhaps advocating Mormonism, door-to-door.

What, exactly, was my business, Ellie had wanted to know. "I'm an... investor," I told her.

That sounded silly, I knew. A 26-year-old "investor" who had time to house-sit for his elderly grandfather in a small town, miles from nowhere. I didn't look, or act, much like an investor, I knew. The statement probably mystified Ellie.

"When will you... come back?" she asked me.

It was an excellent question. I wondered if I would be back, at all. What if "Old" Karl showed up when I visited my children in Atlanta? Perhaps, then, Old Karl would also be the one to drive back in the minivan when the visit ended. Who knew how this new fantasy life I was living was supposed to play out?

Well, now I wanted to be 76 years old again. At least long enough to see my beloved children, and my granddaughter, and to maybe go to one more ballgame with my son-in-law, Ron, whose love affair with the Atlanta Braves was second only to his love and loyalty to his wife, my elder daughter. There was nothing wrong with my old life, except, perhaps, the limited horizons it presented me for a future.

I wondered how I would feel if, returning home from my family in Atlanta, I found that the "new" Karl was gone and wouldn't be coming back? What if he were only a temporary episode in Ellie's young life? What if I went back to the cafe where she worked, and she remembered me -- but only as the elderly gentleman whom she had noticed there before, occasionally, on Sunday mornings?

What if, next week, Young Karl were forever gone?

But I went to Atlanta that Friday morning, anyway. I went after Ellie and I had spent every possible moment together -- working around her work and class schedules -- for two more blissful days and nights.

I went after sending an extravagant bouquet to Ellie's apartment, with a silly card appended. The card bore a likeness of Arnold Schwarzenegger himself, behind those famous sunglasses. The card, of course, said simply:

I'll be back!

Foolishly, on arriving in Atlanta I forgot myself, drove straight into Ron and Karen's neighborhood and parked the minivan right in front of their handsome suburban house. Halfway to their front door, I realized that they would likely recognize the car, and its familiar out-of-state plates, even if they didn't recognize me. I searched my mind for an explanation that I might provide them. I had, after all, been in my "Young Karl" body during the entire drive, all the way to Atlanta.

All the way, in fact, to the curb in front of Ron and Karen's home.

But my pace slowed as I neared their door, and I could tell, at once, that I was -- literally -- my old self again.

Because of my uncertainty about this wild experiment, I hadn't called ahead, as would have been normal, to let them know I was coming. But I was greeted warmly, and my explanation that I was on a trip south to visit an old friend, and was just passing through Atlanta on the way, was readily accepted. Karen was accustomed to my free-and-easy lifestyle, and to my propensity for impromptu road trips.

No, I explained, I wasn't planning to spend the night with them. Just wondered if I could, maybe, take them out to dinner before I pushed on. I was only going to Dothan, Alabama, I explained -- I wanted to get there and spend the night in a motel close to my friend's place, before seeing him the following day.

"You're sure this is a man friend you're going to see?" my son-in-law teased. "You sure it's not your old high school sweetheart, and you just found her on the Internet, and you're hooking up with her again, at long last?"

Ron had been trying, for at least two years, to encourage me to find a "girlfriend." He thought old guys like me would do better with a female companion. It would give me somebody to play dominos with. Somebody who, maybe, would sit still for my long nights in front of the TV, following the futile efforts of the Pittsburgh Pirates to arise from the depths of the National League Central. Ron, accustomed to years of Atlanta Braves success, liked to call the Pirates "Baseball's only sixth-place team."

"Not this trip," I told him, with mock regret. "No girlfriend in Dothan -- worse luck."

If Ron -- and Karen -- only knew! No girl in Dothan, Alabama, but -- back home. Hoo, boy! The girl back home -- too young for my son-in-law, Ron, vigorous and youthful though he might still be at age 54. The girl back home who was younger -- only slightly younger, but younger, all the same -- than Ron's daughter, my beloved one-and-only grandchild.

I was pleased that I wouldn't be seeing her, my granddaughter, this trip. There was something almost -- repulsive, now -- in the idea of my hugging Cyn. Cynthia was too close a contemporary of my secret lover, Ellie.

I'd have to cope with that strange attitude on my part, at some point. It was becoming clear to me that Old Karl still lived. He was alive and well and visible -- to his own family, at least, if not to his casual friends and neighbors back home.

I could never come back here, though, with Ellie. It was an assumption that could probably never be tested, but my best guess was that whenever -- and wherever -- I was with Ellie, her version of Karl Erickson would dominate everything around her. I would be "Young Karl," when I was with her -- even if I were to bring her here, right here to my daughter's home -- and introduce her.

If I did that, I'd likely have to introduce myself, as well. Perhaps my daughter Karen would notice how closely the young man at her doorstep resembled pictures she had seen of her father, back when he was young.

But that scenario, I knew, was never going to be played out. It would be too emotional, for me, to come back here as Young Karl. Even if I were that good an actor, it simply wouldn't do. It would all be too difficult, too impossible, to explain -- to any of the other people involved. Exactly who would I tell them I was? Perhaps I could pass myself off as an illegitimate son (grandson?) of Karen's father? That might make for a somewhat believable explanation, given my physical appearance.

But to what end? Did I want to paint Old Karl as an unfaithful husband to Karen's mother? Some kind of bounder? (Oh, and I'd have to be careful with that 'bounder' stuff. People didn't use words like that anymore. That expression was a golden oldie -- even for Old Karl!)

And what would I tell Ellie? Why were we -- Young Karl and his girlfriend, Ellie -- visiting these older people? And who were they, to me, exactly?

It could never happen. No story that I could concoct would work for Ellie and for my old family at the same time. I was living in two very different worlds, now, and I would have to straddle them. Evidently, only one person could exist in both worlds, and I was that person.

I didn't, of course, press on southward to Dothan that night. I didn't know anyone, male or female, in Dothan, Alabama. I enjoyed a restaurant dinner with my daughter and her husband, I called and talked to my other daughter, promising to visit her soon -- the very next time I passed through town -- and I waved goodbye to Ron and Karen at their door and drove away.

I drove forty miles north toward home, got a room in a motel, and slept until morning. It would be Saturday afternoon when I got home again. It would be, still, the same week in which Ellie and Young Karl had met, had spoken for the first time, had fallen in love, and had made love in Old Karl's bed.

The same bed where, long years now before, Old Karl had made love to his aging wife.

The same bed where, one awful February morning, just over four years ago, the sun came up over the pond on a new day that his wife of 47 years would not rise up to see.

Somewhere on the Interstate, well north of Atlanta, on that Saturday morning, still with three hundred or more miles to go to return home, I found himself transformed again into a 26-year-old (or thereabouts) young man with an unruly thatch of cornflower blond hair.

Unusual, seeing a young fellow like that, driving a staid, well-maintained six-year-old minivan. Maybe he's one of those Youth Ministers, from some Methodist church somewhere, driving around saving souls in the church's all-purpose utility vehicle.

I drove straight to the cafe, but didn't find Ellie there. Well, it was late afternoon. I should have realized her working hours didn't extend from early morning until after 4 p.m. I drove the unfamiliar route to her apartment, knocked on her door, and was greeted by her roommate. The roommate I'd never met, up until that moment. She was a pretty thing. She reminded me of Ellie, a little. A roommate who could have passed for a cousin, perhaps.

"You must be Karl!" she said. "I'm Donna Lee. Sizemore. Donna Lee Sizemore. I'm Ellie's... roommate."

I extended my hand. I guess I was a little distracted. The long drive back from Atlanta. The stupidity of my expecting Ellie -- always -- to be waiting for me at the cafe where she worked. Now the little shock of greeting someone else -- this Donna Lee person -- at Ellie's front door.

"Is she... home?" I asked.

"Well, she's... home, but not here," Donna Lee said. Then she laughed at her own confusing statement and explained further. "Ellie went to her own home -- in Louisville. For the long weekend. She took off from work, skipped her Friday classes, and, boom! Gone. She said you had gone to Atlanta. I guess she didn't expect you back so soon. She'll be gone all weekend. Coming back Sunday night, she said."

"She's from... Louisville?"

Donna Lee laughed. "You didn't even know that?" she said, teasingly. "Ellie told me that you and she had been having a... whirlwind... relationship... But I guess I thought that, by now, you two had covered the basics."

"Not so much," I admitted. "We're still kind-of... getting to know each other."

"But not in the Biblical sense," Donna Lee blurted, sputtering with laughter at her own boldness. "I hear you know each other pretty well already, in some areas!"

Evidently, the roommates didn't keep secrets.

"You want to come in?" she asked me. "Coffee?"

"No. No thanks. I just wanted to let Ellie know that I was back."

"You want her cell phone number? You could call her."

"Well... I'd like the number, yes. I don't think I'll disturb her, back home, but yes, please give me the number, anyway."

Donna Lee wrote it out for me, in a neat handwriting. "Hey, wow," Donna Lee said, handing me the slip of paper, "you know, you look just like Ellie's picture!"

"Yeah," I said. "She's a pretty good painter, isn't she?"

When I got home, I was bemused, but essentially, comforted, to find that I remained Young Karl, despite my reentry into the familiar Old Karl home environment, my recent trip to Atlanta, and Ellie's absence -- by a couple hundred miles -- from the little town where we both lived.

I saw Mrs. Schmidt, again, when I made the long walk to the street to pick up my mail. Interesting that she was out at the same time as I was, again. Maybe she had been watching for me, since I'd driven into the garage a few minutes earlier. Her house, across the street, was much closer to the street than mine. She'd have time to "accidentally" run into me, heading for our respective mailboxes.

"When's your grandfather coming back?" she wanted to know.