Chapter 15 Jules “Across the Universe” #5
I drink in Phoebe’s beautiful face as it’s lit up by the movie—her plump little cheeks and intelligent eyes—and my heart hurts, because already I miss her so much.
I can’t help but love her, can I? Even though I know she’s not mine.
“Don’t go,” she suddenly says, grabbing on to my hand.
Like she’s sensed something.
“It’s okay, baby,” I make Jules say. “I’ve just got this little thing to do, but then when I’m done, your mummy’s going to come back in here and she’ll make you the best milkshake ever with the ice cream Daddy’s getting and we’ll all have a happy evening together. The happiest ever, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I love you,” I whisper, kissing her hair.
It hurts. Oh God, it hurts. Because this really is goodbye. I have to leave. I have to try. Even though God only knows if this is going to work.
Hopefully, just hopefully, Phoebe will be okay. And this universe will work out for this new Jules and new Darius and the love they feel for this beautiful little girl will be enough to carry them all through.
It still takes all my strength to make Jules bolt the door of the garage so that Phoebe doesn’t come in—because if she does, and if she then asks me again not to go, I don’t know if I’ll be able to.
But for now, I hold steady, plugging in the Sony and then inserting the tape.
Because this has to work.
I need my life back.
Pressing “Play,” I hear the opening bars of one of my favorite tracks of all time kick off. “Let’s Stick Together,” by Bryan Ferry.
Which has got to be a good sign, right?
***
And…KKKKKRKRRRRRAAAAASSHHHH…
OH. MY. GOD.
Those are my old scuffed black pixie boots on my feet—which means this can only be the eighties.
It’s worked! Adam’s tape and the Sony have worked.
I really am back before all this began. Even better, this is the corridor at the Peregrine just outside Rose’s office. Meaning I’m right where I need to be.
Jules lets out a yelp of joy and is surprised by her outburst. Because it’s me here inside her and I can’t contain myself.
But I manage to hold myself back and just passenger here a moment, thinking through my plan…as Jules stands here with her Tupperware box full of sandwiches she’s made in Rose’s kitchen, waiting for Adam to turn up so they can share them outside in the sunshine in Regency Square.
Rose’s office door is ajar, and I quickly grab my chance. Taking control, I walk Jules behind Rose’s desk and slide a piece of paper into her old typewriter, press the caps lock, and start.
The only way I can think of to save our future selves is to post them instructions, like in Back to the Future. To warn us and to remind us of what matters. Because the answer is right here under their—our—noses.
It’s like what Rose said, right? That happiness is learning to love what you already have. But boy, oh boy, haven’t I just learned that lesson the hard way?
Haven’t we both?
Two minutes later, as Jules hears Adam coming down the stairs, I make her rip the second hurriedly typewritten sheet out of the roller, put an envelope in the runner, and type instructions.
Then she folds up the sheets of paper and seals them inside.
I can feel Jules feeling confused as she licks the gum, but I know that very soon she won’t remember doing this, because it’s not her doing it. It’s me.
I’m going to post this envelope into the solicitors’ office next door. I know old Mr. Hargreaves will leave his solicitors’ firm to Eddy, who’ll carry on drinking pints in the bar in the Peregrine for the next twenty-five years, as he slowly but surely falls in love with Rose.
He’s a good man. A proper pro. He’ll follow these anonymous instructions. I just know he will.
“I’m all yours,” Adam says, smiling at her from the doorway.
Oh, Adam. There you are. My Adam. My Adam as I first knew him. He’s got a bum-fluff mustache, but his beautiful brown eyes are twinkling beneath his floppy fringe. And calling to me. The same way they always will.
We walk outside, and I continue to impose myself on Jules and make her post the letter through the Hargreaves letter box. Then I sit back inside her, enjoying the ride, as they run across the road and into Regency Square.
They head to a wooden bench, looking out toward the West Pier and the deep blue sea.
And I can’t help marveling at being back here in all Brighton’s seedy, tatty, dilapidated 1989 glory, as—ahhhh—I catch a whiff of vinegary fish and chips from the Regency chippy on the corner and the seagulls swoop and wheel and caw overhead.
I’m too enthralled by Jules and Adam to pay any more attention to what’s going on around us. They’re already tucking into their lunch.
“You have to put the crisps inside,” Adam says, opening his ham and cheese sandwich—his favorite, she already knows—and stuffing it with Walkers cheese-and-onion crisps.
“Heathen.” Jules laughs, taking out her brie and tomato roll.
He punches her playfully on the arm. And I remember how all the other Adams used to do this, until they stopped. Like somewhere along the way we just lost all the fun…
“What’s that?” He turns up his nose.
“Try. Go on.”
He takes a mouthful and nods. “Hmm. Not as bad as it smells.”
“I love French cheeses. I want to try them all when I go to Paris next year.” She’s so convinced. So confident. “What about you?”
“Dunno yet.” He shrugs. “I’ll see what comes along.”
He smiles and takes a tape out of his pocket. “Hey. I made you another one. You want a listen?”
“Wow!” Jules says, accepting the tape case with its thick biro title. Jules Rules! 1989. That’s so sweet, she thinks. Adam puts the tape in his Walkman and plugs in the earphones. Then he puts the Walkman on the bench between them and offers Jules one of the wires.
“This way we can both listen and chat,” he says, pressing “Play.”
My heart swoons as Bryan Ferry starts singing and Adam starts chatting away about the songs he’s chosen. He’s so funny and so earnest, somehow both at the same time, reeling off facts about the artists and who he liked seeing most on this week’s Top of the Pops.
My beautiful music nerd.
As he speaks, I study him, and I can see so clearly the man he’ll become. A man who won’t be perfect, but who’ll do his best when disaster strikes. A man who’ll put his family first. Always. Even when he sometimes gets it wrong. And a man who will love me. Forever. Warts ’n’ all.
It dawns on me now that breathing in the same air as someone for twenty-five years, sleeping together in the same bed, eating together, drinking together, parenting together, losing loved ones together…
bonds you emotionally and spiritually in a way that no amount of universes can ever tear apart.
And in the unspoken give-and-take, the push-and-pull of the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, a kind of glue is formed.
And the glue is the magic. The glue is love.
The glue is the “us-ness” that made me into the person I became, and the person this Adam will one day become too.
And without it, we’re lost.
They’re listening to a Beatles song now, “Across the Universe,” one that Adam says is his favorite. Mine too and never more poignant than right now. As John and Paul harmonize about nothing changing their world, I know what I have to do.
I have to find a way to destroy all of this so that Adam and I can’t start traveling to new universe after new universe, somehow hoping each one will be better than the last. Because it doesn’t always work out that way, does it?
Like with Liam…Adam thought he’d fixed him, when he’d actually made everything so much worse.
Somewhere out there in the multiverse maybe poor Liam is still in Kyoto going through what he’s going through.
And in another there’s still Nelly, needing so much more than I gave.
While in yet another, there’s a beautiful child I had to leave behind—and am always, always going to miss.
Which is why Adam must never discover our machine.
He must never try to be anything other than the Adam he’s going to turn out to be.
For love to have a chance to find its own way, we both have to be free of thinking we can change things with a click of our fingers.
We have to be free to make mistakes, puzzle them out for ourselves, and move on.
It’s the only gift I’ve still got left to give.
“I prefer live music,” I make her say, forcing her to take out her earphone as the song ends.
“Actually, I’m not sure about mixtapes,” I make her continue, as kindly as she can, but she—the 1989 Jules—she’s horrified that she’s rejecting his lovely gesture.
She already knows she wants to make Adam a mixtape in return and has a feeling, deep down, that these mixtapes will be the soundtrack of their years.
That music is the thing that’s starting to make their own magic glue. “But thanks anyway,” I make her add.
“Then maybe we could go to gigs together instead?” Adam suggests after a moment’s thought, hope shining in his eyes, as he tries to hide his disappointment.
I let go and put Jules back in charge. Of everything. Of her future. Her life.
“Sure,” she tells him. “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.” And they grin at each other, her rejection of his tape softened. “But right now I’ve got to go,” she says, standing, her lunch break nearly at an end.
“Oh. Okay. Well, see you,” Adam says.
She darts forward and kisses him on the cheek before walking a few steps away, and as she puts up her hand to wave him goodbye, I feel my own heart breaking, because I want this moment to last forever.
It’s too late, though. I can already feel myself fading…Yes, every bit like that Polaroid in Back to the Future.
Now we’re never going to have the tapes to make that multiverse time machine of ours, there’ll be no time travel.
Meaning I, here, simply cannot exist. I sense a deep shiver of fear at the nothing that’s to come, but I also know that this is the end of just this one me.
This other Jules here, she’ll go on. It’s her time. Her turn.
So my heart flies out to her—this young woman who’ll know nothing of the adventures I’ve had. Nothing of the other universes I’ve seen.
I wish her and this Adam well. Even though they might not get to live their lives together. Something as simple as not sharing a mixtape might be enough to drive them apart…
But I pray that if this Jules is lucky enough to live out a life with this Adam, she won’t change anything. She’ll just do “us,” the way we did the first time round in all its imperfect glory.
Like I would. All over again. In a heartbeat.
The vortex starts to pull me, only this time as the whirlwind begins, I know it’s not taking me anywhere. I’m like a candle about to be snuffed out.
And just like that…my time is up.