Sixteen October 25, 2023
ELSIE REACHES Ladysmith mid-afternoon and drives straight to her father’s house.
She’s not yet ready to face her family and wants to take advantage of this opportunity, when her father is at work, to get the sixth house atlas journey out of the way.
She’ll likely have to return to work herself tomorrow.
She parks her car in her father’s empty driveway and opens the front door with the key she’s carried since childhood, when she spent three weekends a month at her dad’s.
There’s the smell of compost in the air, and the sink is filled with dirty dishes.
The kitchen table is small, but her father never uses it anyway.
Instead, he eats dinner in front of the television, sitting in the recliner he bought for himself following the divorce.
Elsie hangs up her raincoat on the rack by the door and carries the atlas and her phone down the hall to her dad’s home office.
It’s a familiar, safe space, her former bedroom that she still thinks of as her own, although her dad got rid of the single bed and dresser years ago, replacing them with a desk and office chair.
There’s a line of bookshelves on one wall.
Filing cabinets on another. Her father’s home away from work.
Elsie sits in her father’s office chair and places the atlas on the desk in front of her. She takes a deep breath and opens it.
At first, Elsie doesn’t feel like she’s travelled in time at all.
She’s queasy, but no more than she was moments before, after her aborted date with Marcus, the sleepless night in the hotel, Zander’s distance and warnings about what she might face in the sixth house.
Everything appears to be the same: her father’s desktop computer, screen and tower, shelves and filing cabinets.
But there’s a slick new desk here, one that adjusts in height.
Her father had never given much thought to ergonomics before, even though he has chronic neck and back pain from years in front of a computer.
Carrying the open atlas in one hand, Elsie slips quietly to the office door. There’s no one in the dark hallway, but there’s water running in the bathroom across from the office, and a television plays in the living room, even though a wintry midday sun streams in the window.
Elsie turns into the living room, and it takes her a moment to grapple with what she sees.
There’s a small desk near the window. Beside it, there’s a blanket on the floor that’s covered in toys.
More blocks and stuffies are scattered all over.
Her father’s recliner is gone; in its place, there’s a wheelchair, and within it her father naps, snoring.
His face is misshapen somehow, looser than it should be, maybe only slack in sleep.
But no, his right arm is cradled in his lap at a strange angle.
The room first becomes a vacuum, devoid of noise, the drawdown before the wave, as she struggles to comprehend what’s sitting right there in front of her. Then blood thunders to her ears as reality hits, a tsunami. A stroke. Her father has had a stroke.
Elsie takes a step back onto a plastic unicorn, cracking it. At the sound, her father wakes up, confused. He scans the room, sees Elsie there. “Fuck,” he shouts, making Elsie jump.
Then a voice, coming from behind, startles her further. “You changed for our guests? I haven’t seen that dress before. You look good in red.”
A woman carrying a tray of food walks past her.
Mashed peas. Mashed potatoes. Mashed meat, by the look of it.
Where does she know this woman from? Confusion soaks Elsie’s exhausted mind.
Then the image of crystals hanging in front of a window emerges, the light scattered on the walls of the house, the tarot cards on the table. Crystal.
“Is Luna napping already?” Crystal asks. “I thought you wanted her to be awake for this.”
“What are you doing here?” Elsie asks.
“What does it look like? I’m bringing Brian his lunch.” She sets the tray on the small table attached to her father’s wheelchair and then, as she turns back, she puts a hand to her cheek. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Jesus Christ!” her father cries out. He knocks his drink and straw to the floor, and Elsie, alarmed, thinks for a moment he’s angry with her. But his gaze slides past her.
As Crystal cleans up the spilled drink, Elsie turns to see a slightly older version of herself standing at the entrance to the hall.
Dressed in yellow leggings and a stained sweatshirt, her doppelg?nger holds a toddler who sucks her finger.
On seeing Elsie, the girl pops the finger out of her mouth.
Crystal laughs. “Oh, Lizzy. I thought she was you!”
So, Elsie calls herself Lizzy now, in the near future.
“We were expecting you,” Lizzy says.
The girl asks, “You Mommy?” and points a wet finger at Elsie.
Mommy?
“Elsie’s sort of my twin,” Lizzy tells her, as she puts her down. “Like Tammy and Talia at daycare.” She takes her daughter’s hand. “Elsie, this is Luna, my—our daughter.”
Her daughter. This is her daughter. “Luna,” Elsie says. A name chosen for a child conceived during this peculiar lunar cycle.
Elsie squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, trying to get her bearings. Her father’s stroke, this child. It’s all too much to take in.
Nevertheless, she squats to greet Luna. The girl twirls, showing off her purple princess dress.
This is the baby she held in her arms during her fifth house trip to the future.
This is her kid! Big blue eyes, impossibly white-blond hair—traits Luna must have inherited from Marcus, his Scandinavian roots.
Luna points at Elsie. “Princess?” she asks her mother.
“We’re all royalty here,” Lizzy explains to Elsie. “Dad is the king, and the wheelchair is his throne. I’m a princess of course, just like Luna is. Crystal’s the fairy godmother.”
At that, Crystal curtseys. “But why are you here?” Elsie asks her.
Lizzy answers for her. “She fills in when we need help. If Dad’s care aide can’t make it, or if Luna’s sick and can’t go to daycare while I work. She’s family. Crystal really is Luna’s godmother.”
But in her present, Elsie barely knows the woman. Then again, she saw her at Luna’s birth.
Crystal pats Elsie’s arm. “I’ll finish pulling together our lunch spread,” she says. “And leave you alone to visit.” She disappears into the kitchen.
“Book?” Luna asks, tugging at the atlas under Elsie’s arm.
Elsie imagines them snuggled in a chair, the warmth of the child in her arms as she reads to her. But not from this book.
Lizzy picks up a block from the floor and offers it to the toddler. “Luna, can you build me a castle? Mommy and Elsie need to talk.”
“Okay.” The girl totters off to the blanket and begins her construction, stacking blocks.
“She’s beautiful,” Elsie says. Luna’s tiny fingers, her singsong voice as she chatters to herself. Luna is hers, her daughter, should she choose to have a baby.
“Girl, girl, both,” her dad says, pointing.
“I think he’s saying you and Luna look alike,” Lizzy says. They do. Elsie already sees her mother’s high forehead and the set of her eyes, her chin, in the girl. Or perhaps her father is commenting on Lizzy and Elsie, the strangeness of seeing past and present together like this.
“Dad has some kind of aphasia?” Elsie asks.
“Word salad. Mostly he swears.”
“I caught that,” she croaks, something between a laugh and a cry.
“The stroke took his ability to speak,” Lizzy says, “but not to understand speech. We just need to talk slower, so he can process what we’re saying.”
“When did he have this stroke?”
Lizzy hugs herself. “He was over at Bailey’s for our family barbeque when this last one hit. He fell to the floor, with his face sagging, his whole right side paralyzed. We were lucky the EMTs got him to the hospital as fast as they did. He could have died right there.”
“Fuck it,” her dad says, agreeing. “Assholes.”
“But when?” Elsie asks again.
“About four months ago. It was a Wednesday. September 30.”
“You said this one was his last. How many has he had?”
Lizzy glances over at their father. “He had his first small stroke on the day I—you—came here, to this moment.”
“He has a stroke today?”
“In your present, yes. At 3:33 P.M.”
“You remember the time?”
“I’ll never forget it.”
Elsie looks down at the atlas in her hand. “I opened the atlas at about 3:00 P.M. So he only has a half hour.” Outside, a large shredding company truck rumbles past, shaking the window. Elsie can feel the vibrations in her chest. “I’ve got to get back,” she says. “Warn him.”
But Lizzy gently steers Elsie to her father. “Stay awhile. Hang out with your dad. The others will be here soon.”
“The others?” Elsie asks Lizzy.
“Family and friends,” she says. When Elsie hesitates, thinking she must leave right away to warn her father, Lizzy adds, “When you get back, it’ll be exactly the same time as when you left.”
Of course it will.
Holding the atlas open in one hand, Elsie leans over to hug her father.
He wraps his good arm around her. His mushy lunch.
The smell of pee. He must wear incontinence briefs now.
The thought of her dad in adult diapers, like those Luna wears, brings her to tears.
Will she have to change those diapers? Lizzy must, at times.
“What are you feeding him?” Elsie asks.
“He has trouble swallowing,” Lizzy explains. When her father struggles with his spoon, Lizzy fills it with mush and lifts it to his mouth.
Luna jumps up and dances around the room humming to herself, scattering toys in her wake.
“You’re working, taking care of both Dad and Luna,” Elsie says. “It’s a lot to juggle.” Too much. Most days Elsie struggles to get herself out of bed and ready for work.
“We have something of a routine down now,” Lizzy says.
“Luna is in daycare. We hired a live-in care aide who’s here most days, and Bailey and I take turns on the weekends.
But even when the care aide is here, one of us stops in to see Dad almost every day.
We bought a van, had it modified so we can take him into town and to the office. ”
Her father makes a sound like vroom.
“He still likes to go to work, and to work in his home office.” That explains the fancy desk he has there, one built to accommodate a wheelchair. “But yeah, I’m tired,” Lizzy says.
Elsie can see the fatigue on her face. Her skin is pale; there are dark circles under her eyes. And yet she appears strangely content. In the business of her everyday life, it seems she’s found the peace that Elsie currently lacks.
“Can’t you put Dad into long-term care?” Elsie asks.
That sets her dad off. “Na, na, na!” he says. “Assholes. Jesus Christ!”
“We’ve talked about it. But Dad doesn’t want to go.”
Elsie takes her father’s good hand in both of her own. “But he’ll get better, right?”
Lizzy bobs her head side to side. “He’s regained limited control of his right arm through rehab. His doctor thinks he’ll continue to improve if he keeps at it.”
Her father lifts his arm to demonstrate, but it seems he has no control over his fingers.
“He won’t walk again?”
“No.”
Elsie feels the prickle of tears and wipes her eyes with her sleeve. As if sensing her distress, Luna holds up her arms, mistaking Elsie for her mother. “Up,” she says.
Elsie picks her up and the girl wraps her arms around her neck, lays her head on her shoulder.
Her small, warm body. A deep calm settles over Elsie as she hugs the child.
She doesn’t want to let go. “I could get used to this,” she says, laughing, crying.
Still, it isn’t the future she envisioned for herself.
Lizzy’s stained clothing; her makeshift desk and laptop where she struggles to wedge in work time; the blanket full of toys; and, oh, god, her father in a wheelchair.
She holds Luna too tightly and the child squirms. Elsie puts her down. “I’ve got to go, warn Dad,” she says.
But Lizzy grasps her hand tightly. “You need to stay,” she says. Then, loosening her grip, she softens her voice. “Stay,” she says, as if trying to tell her something, something she can’t say in front of Luna or their father.
“Okay.” She’ll stay for a few minutes longer. “Will Dad talk again, other than swearing?” she asks Lizzy.
“He works with a speech therapist three times a week. He’s making progress.”
“But the stroke will undoubtedly shorten his life.”
Lizzy hesitates before answering. “Yes.”
“He’s got to eat better, work less, bring down his blood pressure and cholesterol. I’ll make sure he does.”
“You can try.”
Elsie hugs her father again. He pats her back with his good hand. “Asshole,” he says, in lieu of a term of endearment.
“You’re the asshole,” Elsie says, smiling as she wipes the tears away.
Her father makes a gesture with his hand as if to say, you and me both. For an instant he seems like his old self. “Up the sky loop,” he says, lifting his hand as if orchestrating a symphony. “Christmas carol.”
“That’s right,” Lizzy says. “You can sing.” She turns to Elsie. “Singing therapy. He may not be able to say the words he wants to yet, but he can sing them. Can’t you, Dad?”
Taking that as an invitation, he starts to sing “You Are My Sunshine,” enunciating each word as if practicing English as a second language.
It’s a song clearly picked by his speech pathologist as her dad would never choose to sing anything so basic himself.
Luna, playing on the blanket, sings along with him in the chorus, the only words she knows.
Her sweet, high-pitched, chirping voice.
Elsie joins in but stops as the emotion of the moment hits both her and her twin and they reach for each other, clutching hands.
Her father keeps on singing alone, his voice and words ringing in the room as clear and true as a bell.