Chapter 1 #2
That was the first time she told me her name. Princess. I said that’s not a name. She said that’s what everyone in her family called her. I said all right.
The next week, Princess brought me some red mabuyu sweets. The next week I brought her a sliced coconut. The next week she brought a book about butterflies and read it out loud under a tree. The next week, we held hands when Lallu scooped us up. From then on, we did it every time.
When you are lonely and you suddenly find a friend, it fills up your world. Although I was just eight years old, my time with Princess felt like something more than companionship. Puppy love, I guess. Saturdays became the only thing I looked forward to.
The last time I saw Princess, Lallu sprayed us both with water and we had to change clothes in the trees. I peeked at her naked back as she pulled a borrowed shirt over her head. She turned, caught me looking, and smiled.
“We should build a house here one day, Alfie, by the ocean. And then we can get married and Lallu can live with us. OK?”
“OK,” I said.
She smiled. I smiled back. I felt the afternoon sun drying my skin. It’s the best memory I have of Africa.
Then came the worst.
?
Eleven months into our stay, my mother got sick from a bug that bit her and had to go to the hospital, where she remained for several weeks. When she came home, she was thin and weak, but I took her return as a sign she was getting better.
I had been into comic books back in the States, and before we’d departed, I’d begged my father for a Superman costume. In Kenya, I slept every night with the red cape on. A reminder of home, I suppose.
When I awoke that particular Saturday morning, I bounced to the mirror with my red cape over my white undershirt and posed, hands on hips, flexing what little muscle I had.
“What are you doing?”
My father was at the door. I dropped my arms.
“Nothing.”
“Go sit with your mother.”
“Why?”
“Just go sit with your mother.”
“Why?”
“Because I told you to, that’s why.”
“But I haven’t had breakfast yet.”
“Do as I say. I’m going to get her medicine.”
“Can I go?”
“No.”
“I’m still going to play with Lallu later, right?”
“We’ll see. Go sit with your mother. Move it.”
I dragged down the small hallway until I heard the front door shut.
I peeked in my parents’ room. My mother was in bed, her eyes closed under the white mosquito netting.
I held there, listening to her breathe. I told myself if she didn’t stir within a minute, I wasn’t supposed to wake her, and I should go outside and play.
A minute passed. Absolving myself, I scooted out the door and ran to the local soccer field, which was really just a large patch of cinnamon--colored dirt. It was empty, so I raced from one end to the next, my cape flapping behind me, leaping every fifth step, as if I might lift into the air.
The sun was high and the breeze was light. After many failed launches, I lay down in some nearby kikuyu grass and stared up at the long white clouds. Eventually, I nodded off.
When I awoke, I meandered through the village.
I caught the usual stares of our neighbors.
The red cape didn’t help. I passed the church where my parents worked and saw the local pastor, his tweed suit coat draping a clerical collar.
He was tending a goat. I waved. He waved back. The goat bleated. It was almost noon.
I walked back home in the oppressive heat, listening to my sneakers grind the gravelly dirt. I noticed a green jeep parked in front of our cabin. When I entered, I heard mumbled conversation, then my father yelling, “Alfie? Is that you? Alfie, don’t come in here!”
Suddenly, he was in front of me, having shut the bedroom door behind him.
“Where did you go?”
His voice sounded wobbly.
“Mom was sleeping so I went out.”
“You went out?” He bit his knuckles. “You went out?”
I remember him glaring, as if that were the cruelest thing I could have said. I didn’t understand. What had I done? It was only when I saw a doctor exit the bedroom that I had the sense something terrible had just happened, and that, in playing Superman on a soccer field, I’d missed it.
?
My mother died while I was trying to fly.
A pulmonary embolism. From what they told me, she went quickly and “didn’t suffer,” but since no one was there, I’m not sure how they knew.
I remember sitting on my mattress that night, sobbing, gagging on my breath, then sobbing again.
Down the hall, I heard my father turn up the radio, really loud, then make a terrible howling noise, like a bear with its paw caught in a trap.
Before I went to sleep, I threw my red cape out the bedroom window.
I watched the wind blow it across the dirt.
I returned to bed wishing the day had never happened, hating Africa, hating Superman, hating myself, and missing my mother in every molecule of hot air being moved around the room by a plastic fan.
I slapped my body repeatedly, whispering the words “stupid, stupid.” It began to storm outside and I fell asleep to the sound of rain.
?
When I awoke the next morning, the red cape was somehow draped around me again. My eyes were blurry. I heard my father’s heavy feet enter the room.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Go sit with your mother.”
“What?”
“Go sit with your mother.”
I swallowed.
“How?”
“What do you mean how? Go sit with her. I’m going to get her medicine.”
I know this sounds impossible, Boss. I can only tell you that it happened, and that I went along with it, the way you go along with a dream, even to someplace you don’t want to go.
I reached my mother’s room. The door was open.
When I finally looked inside, she was sleeping under the netting, just like the day before.
Had I been older, I might have run off screaming. But as an eight--year--old boy, I just wanted to be with her, no matter how impossible it seemed. So I stood there, frozen, until my mother’s eyes opened and she saw me hovering, and she smiled and hoarsely whispered, “Well, hello, Superman.”
I must have recoiled, because it registered on her face.
“Alfie? What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t answer. My breath came in puffs.
“Alfie? Tell me.”
“Mom . . . ?” I whispered.
“Oh, no.” Her expression changed. “Alfie? Have you been here before?”
“Uh--huh.”
“And the last time, did something bad happen?”
“Yes.”
“Did I die?”
I nodded.
“And you saw that?”
“No . . . I . . . I went out to . . .”
I started crying.
“I’m sorry, Mommy.”
She took a deep breath. Her voice rose. “We don’t have much time, then, sweetheart. Listen to me.” She pulled the netting aside, leaned forward, and put my face between her hands. “This is something you’re going to be able to do the rest of your life. Get second chances. Do you understand?”
I shook my head no.
“It’s a gift. A power. Some people in our family get it. You’re blessed to be one of them. But it won’t fix everything, Alfie. The second time won’t always be better than the first.”
She squeezed my hand. “Don’t try and change everything, OK? Don’t correct every mistake. Don’t take advantage of people. Don’t use your power for money. Be careful. Do you hear me, Alfie? Alfie, are you listening?”
I felt like I was suffocating.
“Mom,” I blurted out, “are you going to die again?”
She bit her lip, then patted a space on the edge of the bed.
“Sit here, baby,” she said, forcing a smile. “Let me tell you all the things I love about you.”
?
Now, in case you’re wondering, Boss, my mother still died that morning, this time in front of me, after listing a dozen or so things she loved about her only child.
I saw her grab her arm, I heard her groan, I watched her head roll back.
My father returned and found me weeping against the bed, the mosquito netting hanging over my face.
This is when I first learned the limits of my “gift”: I can’t change mortality. If someone’s time is up, it’s up. I can travel back to before the death takes place. I can alter how I experience it. But it’s still going to happen. Nothing I can do to stop it.
Can I say it was better, rewinding my mom’s departure? I don’t know. The first time, I left the house and returned motherless. The second time, I stood witness as she departed this world. You tell me.
Nassau
Alfie looked up from the pages. LaPorta was staring.
“You’ve got some imagination. I’ll give you that.”
“I didn’t imagine it,” Alfie said.
“Sure, you didn’t.”
LaPorta rocked slowly in his chair.
“It’s a weird name. ‘Alfie.’ You don’t hear it very often.”
“No.”
“Your passport says Alfred.”
“My father’s father’s name. My mother said it sounded like a British lord. She started calling me Alfie after that song.”
“What song?”
“From the ’60s. ‘What’s it all about, Alfie?’ ”
“Oh, right.”
“If I had a dollar for every time someone sang that to me—-”
“You’d have as much money as you stole?”
Alfie smiled. “I didn’t steal anything.”
“Really? You immediately wired your winnings to some woman, and we picked you up the next morning at a travel agency, buying tickets to Africa.”
“So?”
“Sooo, that sounds a lot like a guy trying to run and hide from something.”
“The tickets weren’t for me.”
“Who were they for?”
“If you just let me finish this—-”
“Yeah, yeah. Your alibi notebook. I know.”
LaPorta checked his phone. No message yet from the Bahamian police. He sighed. Things took forever in the islands.
“It’s from a movie, isn’t it?” LaPorta said. “That song? Alfie?”
“Yes. A movie about a playboy who gets all these women to fall in love with him, but eventually pays a price.”
“So that’s you? A playboy?”
“No. Just the guy who paid a price.”
“Well, I don’t give a crap. How’s that? When do we get to the roulette scheme?”
“I told you. It’s part of the story.”
LaPorta drummed his fingernails on the table.
“Come on then, playboy. Keep reading.”
The Composition Book