Chapter 8
A Toyota key hung from a hook by the door. Mary grabbed it and hurried down the long narrow wooden staircase outside her apartment, feeling lighter on her feet than she had in decades. A light-blue Corolla with a Channel 77 parking permit stuck to the windshield was parked behind the house. She’d had an older version of that same vehicle the first time she was in her twenties, and seeing the newer model in the driveway gave her the same off-kilter feeling she’d had inside the apartment.
She steered the car down the street toward Darbi’s. As she turned onto Old Connecticut Path and crossed the bridge over the Mass Pike, her heart pounded. What if in this dream—or whatever it was—Darbi didn’t live nearby? Mary’s throat went dry. She reached for a can of diet soda in the cup holder and broke out in a coughing fit as the hot flat cola slid down her throat. How long has that been there? The light turned green. Her foot shook as she stepped on the gas. Please let Darbi be there. Please. She chanted it in her head until she turned onto her cousin’s street.
Everything about Darbi’s Campanelli ranch looked exactly as it did in Mary’s real life. The house was painted a turquoise color better suited for the Southwest than New England, pink and white daisies bordered the crushed-stone walkway, and a rainbow flag flew above the mailbox. Darbi’s yellow Volkswagen Bug was even backed into its usual spot in front of the garage with the top down.
The sound of Steely Dan’s song “Do It Again” drifted out of the backyard. Mary sprinted across the freshly mowed lawn toward the music. With each step, she expected her knees to creak and her feet to protest in pain, but they didn’t. She unlatched the fence and pushed open the gate. “Darbi, Darbi!” They were the first words she’d spoken out loud since waking up young, and she barely recognized the perky, high voice as her own.
Wearing a reddish-orange bikini and an enormous sun hat, Darbi floated on an inflatable unicorn in the in-ground pool. “Who’s here?”
Mary rushed toward the diving board. “Mary.”
Darbi sprang up to a sitting position and pulled off her sunglasses. For a moment, she sat perfectly still. Her lips quivered. She laughed, softly and controlled at first, but her laugh soon erupted into a roar. Mary knew it was Darbi’s nervous laugh, the inappropriate one that sometimes slipped out at funerals or whenever she was uncomfortable. The fact that she was laughing that way now made Mary think Darbi had been telling the truth and that, by having her wisdom teeth removed, Mary had entered an alternate world where she was twenty-four again. No, what was she thinking? That wasn’t possible.
Darbi slipped off the unicorn into the water. Her hat drifted away, leaving her gray cornrows bobbing on the surface. Her arms and legs fluttered as she dog-paddled to the pool’s steps and reached for a towel.
She waited until she dried herself off before speaking. “I really wish you had listened to me.”
Mary drew in a deep breath. “This is a dream. It has to be.” She sank into a lounge chair, realizing—too late—its cushions were wet. The back of her sundress got soaked. Would I be able to feel the wetness if this were a dream? She slapped her face, hoping the slap would wake her. Her skin stung, but she was still in the lounge chair by Darbi’s pool. She whacked herself again, harder.
“What in the world are you doing?” Darbi’s shadow grew larger as she approached Mary’s chair.
“Trying to wake myself up from this dream.”
Standing in front of Mary now, Darbi unwound the towel from around her waist and snapped it against Mary’s bare legs.
“Ouch.” Mary rubbed her stinging skin.
“You felt that because this isn’t a dream. It happened because you had your wisdom teeth removed.” Darbi squeezed her eyes closed and shook both fists in the air. “I warned you not to get your teeth out. Why didn’t you listen?”
The strong scent of chlorine coming off Darbi made Mary’s nose itch. She sneezed. “I entered an alternate universe where I’m young again because I had my wisdom teeth out?”
Darbi’s face was tight with anguish. “You erased the last thirty years of your life is what you did.”
The air in the backyard seemed to thicken, and Mary struggled to breathe. “Tell me exactly what’s going on.”
“I can’t explain it any better than that.” Her entire body shook.
“Try.”
Darbi took a long, calming breath. “It’s ... ah, geez. We need alcohol for this.” Her flip-flops slapped against her heels as she made her way to the pool bar. “Run inside and get the chips and salsa.”
Mary’s legs felt weak as she stood. She didn’t want food and drinks. She wanted to know what was going on. Inside, a photo hanging on the sunroom’s wall of her sitting alone on a large boulder brought her to a dead stop. For over a decade, a picture of her, Dean, and Kendra standing beneath the marquee for Beauty and the Beast at the Boston Opera House had hung in that exact spot. A chill ran down her spine. If she was twenty-four again, what had happened to Kendra and Dean in this universe?
By the time she returned with the snack, Darbi was perched on a barstool sipping a giant strawberry margarita. A full glass rested in front of the empty stool next to her, and the scent of patchouli hung in the air. Mary placed the bowls of chips and salsa between her cousin and herself. “Tell me what’s going on.” Her words came out in a rush.
Darbi pointed to the drink. With a shaky hand, Mary lifted the glass by its cactus-shaped stem. The thick, creamy red liquid spilled over the edges onto the bar top as she sipped. The spicy tequila burned her throat. She lowered her drink toward the coaster, but Darbi slid a hand under the bottom of the glass and pushed it up. “You’re going to need more.”
Mary emptied half her cup. Darbi began, her voice a hoarse whisper: “The last thirty years of your life have been erased.”
The hot sun beat down on the back of Mary’s head. Sweat rolled down her neck. Her brain felt as if it were on fire, about to explode. She didn’t know what she’d expected Darbi to say, but she wanted to hear something that made sense. Then again, how could anyone make sense of this? “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know how else to explain it.”
“What happened to my other life?”
Darbi sighed and looked toward the fence separating her yard from the neighbor’s, where a bronze sun sculpture hung. She stirred her drink with her straw and slowly turned back to Mary. “The last thirty years of the life you knew never happened.” Darbi paused and placed her hand over Mary’s as if she was trying to comfort her. When she spoke again, sorrow tinged her voice. “None of it.”
Something about Darbi’s touch and the way she’d said those last three words chilled Mary to the core. She folded her arms across her chest and rocked back and forth, trying to warm herself. In her mind, she heard Father Carbone announce her and Dean as man and wife, felt the weight of Kendra in her arms in the delivery room. Her eyes welled up with happy tears as she remembered those life-changing occasions. Of course the last thirty years of her life had happened. “If it never happened, why do I remember everything so clearly?”
Darbi reached for the pitcher and topped off their glasses. “I don’t know. The memories are what make this painful, make it a curse sometimes instead of a blessing.”
Mary wanted to ask Darbi what she meant by a curse, but the words stuck to the roof of her mouth. She was afraid to ask. She stared into her drink, trying to remember the woman she’d been before meeting Dean. An insecure girl, struggling to find herself in the world. She’d fit perfectly by his side and in the family they’d created together. If she’d never married him, then Kendra wouldn’t exist and Mary would have missed out on the purest, most all-encompassing form of love known, and the world would have been cheated out of the most compassionate person Mary had ever met.
“When it happened to me, the only people who remembered my other life were me and Uncle Cillian,” Darbi said. “I expect you and I will be the only ones with memories of your past.”
Mary couldn’t focus. The harder she tried to concentrate, the more confused she became. She wasn’t sure if the hot sun, the alcohol, the bizarre situation, or all three were to blame. The only thing she knew was that what Darbi was saying was entirely impossible. Years couldn’t be erased from a life. Those drugs Dr. Montari had injected into her vein must be causing her to hallucinate. She stood and stretched, trying to clear her mind. Returning to her stool, she decided to poke holes in Darbi’s story, prove this was all a dream. Like earlier, her rationality frightened her. She wouldn’t be so reasonable if this was a dream.
“What about your parents? They must have noticed you were younger.”
“They never saw me after I had my wisdom teeth out. A few days before I had the procedure, I came out to them, and they disowned me.” Darbi looked up at the sky and wiped away a tear.
“Was that your regret, coming out to them?”
“No.” Darbi bit into a chip. “I married a man I didn’t love because that’s what was expected of me.”
Mary sat up straighter. “You were married to a man?”
“Sean McDaniel, a good guy, but there was no chemistry. There couldn’t be. I’m not wired that way.” Darbi stared off into the distance.
Mary imagined her cousin was seeing the old Darbi, side by side with Sean. For the life of her, she couldn’t picture what this person would look like, couldn’t envision Darbi with any man. Couldn’t imagine anyone other than Jacqui with her cousin.
“At that time, divorce wasn’t allowed in Ireland.”
“What do you mean it wasn’t allowed?”
“It was illegal until 1996, when the people voted to allow it, but just barely.”
Mary squirmed on her stool, picturing her friend Jenni, miserable and emotionally beaten down, still getting belittled by her ex-husband if divorce were illegal in the United States. There must have been lots of women like Jenni in Ireland.
“Every day, I regretted my decision to marry Sean more,” Darbi said. “My wisdom teeth started to hurt, and Uncle Cillian told me if I got them removed, I could erase my past. Of course I thought he was a senile old man, but I had the teeth extracted because they hurt like no one’s business. I woke up seven years younger and, most important, single. I packed up and moved here because, back then, Americans were more tolerant of my lifestyle.” A fly hovered over the bowl of chips, and Darbi shooed it away. “Did you know it was a crime to be gay in Ireland until 1993?”
So many things about what Darbi was saying made no sense. Having years erased from life by removing wisdom teeth, divorce and certain types of love being illegal. Mary was convinced again that she was dreaming or hallucinating. Any minute now, she’d wake up in the dentist’s chair. For now, she’d play along.
“Does Jacqui know? About, about, um, years getting erased from your life?”
Darbi shook her head so fast that waterdrops flew off her hair. “It’s hard keeping this extraordinary thing that happened to me from her. She’d understand me a lot better if I told her, but she’d never believe me.” She stopped and fixated on Mary. “Promise me you’ll never talk to anyone about what happened except me.”
“No one would believe me.”
“You’d end up committed.” Darbi dunked a chip in salsa. “There is one very important rule you need to follow, no matter what.”
The way Darbi said the last three words caused the hairs on the back of Mary’s neck to stand. She pushed her drink away and leaned closer to her cousin, sharpening her focus.
“No seeking out people from your past.” Darbi pointed at Mary with a chip. “That means don’t look for them in person or on the internet.”
“Not even Dean?”
“Especially Dean.”
“Why?”
Darbi rubbed her temples. “Just believe me. Bad things will happen. To you.” Her voice softened. “And him.”
Mary swayed on her stool, her sense of unease growing. “What kind of bad things?”
“Trust me, you don’t want to find out.”
Mary’s heart hammered. She was starting to think being twenty-four again wouldn’t be as great as she’d originally thought. No matter; this was just a hallucination. She would go with it until she woke up. In the meantime, she’d have fun.
“It’s funny,” Darbi said. “We get our wisdom teeth removed and go back to being our younger selves. But during these do-overs, without our wisdom teeth, we have more wisdom than we ever had before. We’ve learned from the mistakes of our old lives and get to use that knowledge and experience in our new ones.”
Out front, a car door slammed. Mary turned toward the gate, expecting to see Jacqui.
“It’s just the next-door neighbor,” Darbi said. “Always gets home about this time.”
“What’s going to happen when Jacqui sees me? How will I explain that I’m thirty years younger?”
A hummingbird fluttered by the feeder, drinking up the sugar water. After a few seconds, the magical creature flittered off. “That bird flew backward, and we didn’t think anything of it,” Darbi said. “Jacqui will think nothing of you being younger. She won’t have any memories of the other you, only of this one.”
“But I don’t have memories of this version of myself.”
“It’s a little tricky at first, but as you interact with people, your mind fills in the blanks. Somehow, you’re able to pull up memories and make sense of things.”
“What if I can’t?” Mary’s cheeks twitched as she imagined herself bumbling through her new life. Hallucination or not, this was all getting to be too much. She tried to take a deep breath but felt a sharp pain across her chest. She sucked in air, certain she was about to have a heart attack.
“Relax,” Darbi commanded. “Somehow it all works out. The only thing you need to figure out is what you’ll do differently this time so that you don’t end up with the same regrets, or any regrets.” She settled back on her stool. “It’s like you pressed a magical undo button for your life. Tell me what you’ll do to make the most of this opportunity.”
Mary took a big gulp of her drink, savoring the sweet taste of strawberry. She was twenty-four again with a chance to correct the biggest mistake of her life. A warmth spread across her chest. There was nothing to be afraid of. This was exactly what she had wished for, a chance to do it over to focus on her career. Her heart rate slowed. The pain in her chest went away. She closed her eyes and imagined a picture of herself on the cover of People under the headline “America’s Most Trusted Broadcaster.”
“I’m going to be the anchor for a major television network.”