Friday's Whims of the Time Traveler 46.1: October 7th, 2011
This is an untitled, unfinished novel that was technically left alone in late 2008. However, the last time it was modified and checked for errors was 2011, where upon I decided that the absurdity of the plot combined with the sloppy British research was too much for the story to continue.
However, seeing as this is Whims of the Time Traveler, it's a perfect example of my first attempt at long fiction, so I've decided to unabashedly display it.
Have fun.
Untitled: Chapter Six
by Belinda Roddie
“Joan?”
I didn’t answer.
“Joan?”
It was useless to ignore Alfred; I had been attempting to ignore him throughout breakfast, but I knew that he was going to force a response out of me even if he had to repeat my name like a parrot. I looked up at him in acknowledgement.
“You haven’t eaten anything,” Alfred was saying, looking over his newspaper with his eyes welling with a sort of concern that seemed almost exaggerated to me. “You’ve just been picking at it. Are you all right?”
“Sure,” I mumbled.
“You didn’t have that dream again, did you?”
“No.” He wasn’t going to get any more out of me. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
It had been three days since the boys had shown me the coffin, but of course it seemed longer to me. The effect had probably been exaggerated by the fact that I wouldn’t leave my bed for two of those days. Alfred had come into my room and I had pulled the sheets over my head. I didn’t want to look at him, or anybody. I told him that I was sick; he offered to bring me tea. I told him I just needed quiet.
I couldn’t stand having Alfred gazing at me in that concerned, almost perplexed fashion any longer, so I pushed my plate away and stood up. “I’m going to take a walk.”
“But Joan, you haven’t eaten.”
“I know. I’m not hungry,” I replied.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m fine, Grandpa,” I said as I whipped past him and out the door.
But in reality, I didn’t think I should call him Grandpa anymore. He had hidden the truth from me, actually fabricated a story to hide the truth from me, and of course, all of my trust in him was gone. If he had lied about how I had gotten here, what else could he have been lying about for the past five years? I didn’t think of an answer to that question. I didn’t want to think of one.
Maybe he just didn’t want to tell me that I had been found in a coffin, I thought to myself as I walked. The very idea of it made me shudder. I was almost repulsed. I felt inhuman, like I didn’t belong. I passed houses that stood quietly, casting their observing shadows over my silhouette like they wanted to comfort me. It wasn’t happening. Every question I had had in the past was coming back to me in full force; all the questions I thought were answered. Now I couldn’t believe what I had been told anymore. Alfred wouldn’t be able to convince me of anything now.
And to make matters worse, I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to confront my so-called grandfather, get the truth out of him at last. I wanted to see if he could confess, and perhaps, if life was kind to me, he’d simply tell me that he thought it was too morbid or bizarre of a story to tell me that I was found, of all things, on a raft in a coffin on the river. But even then, new questions would arise from that confession. If he were my grandfather, he had to have some idea of how it could’ve happened, and who would ever put me in a coffin, and why such a strange situation could have come up. Was I meant to have died? Was it all just a trick? What in the world had happened that day, and why had everyone else but me known about it?
I found myself at the river again. I had half a mind to look for a decayed raft, its wood rotting in the mud of the Thames. I didn’t find anything. I didn’t feel like punting or doing anything for that matter. I simply sat down, the wet grass soaking into the bottom of my jeans. I didn’t care, only watching the ripples in the brown surface of the river, the currents sucking all the remnants of my past away, all the answers.
My silence was interrupted by the sound of footsteps, flattening the greenery with suppressed thumps against the hardened soil. I turned to look and was immediately met with the glare of the summer sun. I saw an old man’s shadow limping toward me.
“All right there, Joan?” a familiar voice wheezed. I heard a rustling as Harold’s boots stopped beside me. Raising my head, I saw his white hair turning to gold in the light.
“Hey, Harold,” I murmured, trying to not to pay much attention to him. I hoped he’d get the message that I wanted to be left alone. It didn’t work.
“Good to see you out and about, lass,” Harold said as he looked down at me, his eyes crinkling as he gave me a warm smile. “Your granddad said you were more than a mite ill. Stayed in bed for a few nights. You doing better?”
“Fine,” I replied. “I’m fine.”
I turned my face away, twirling one particularly long grass blade around my index finger, wincing as it grazed the scarred flesh. A moment later, Harold sat down beside me, shuffling about and groaning audibly as he did so. I heard his knees squeal in protest, but regardless, he stayed down there, his legs crossed, his eyes intently burning into the side of my head as if attempting to penetrate my skull and read my mind.
“Something wrong, Joan?” he asked.
I couldn’t help smiling; his kindness seemed like a joke. “When did Alfred tell you to start calling me Joan?”
I knew he was startled without looking at him. I could picture his widened eyes, gaping mouth, but even if he didn’t look like that, I could sense the shock from him. If anything, he would think I was being audacious. “What’s this? I thought you called him Grandpa?”
“I don’t know if I should anymore,” I said before my emotions began to swell in my chest. I turned to finally look Harold full in the face, my eyes burning into each wrinkle and crease into his jaw and brow. “How long have you known?”
Harold blinked. “Known what?”
“Known how I got here. Known they found me in a ruddy casket. In the river.” I couldn’t help growling; my voice was constricted in my throat, held in an invisible vice. “It wasn’t a car crash, was it? Was it?”
“I…”
“And don’t lie to me. I already know.”
His mouth opening and closing silently, Harold attempted to stammer out words. I imagined a half-assed excuse, perhaps a move to blame Alfred; that he didn’t know, that he wasn’t there. But nothing he’d say wouldn’t go under my scrutiny. I’d know if he was making up the story. I’d know if he was lying. When Harold finally spoke, I could tell he was trying to do so with utmost clarity, but I could hear the shaking in his voice.
“I don’t know who told you, or why, but it was none of your business,” he said. “It wasn’t important.”
“Wasn’t important?” I repeated, feeling my eyebrows shoot up, my lips part in a choked laugh. “You think it wasn’t important? What else have you hidden from me, Harold? Do you know who my parents were? They didn’t disappear, did they? They could be close by, huh? What’s the truth? What do you know?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” I snapped.
“Nothing,” Harold reiterated, his voice dry and forced. The bones in his legs rattled as he attempted to get up, his breathing harsh as he stood. “Only how we found you.”
“So it’s true,” I whispered. “You know where I come from.”
“I didn’t say that,” mumbled Harold, and for the first time, I heard a sense of desperation in his voice. He suddenly looked around, like he was checking if anybody was there to hear his words. The place was almost dead, it was so quiet. “I said I know how we found you. Nothing else.”
“…In a coffin?”
“Yes. On a raft. Is that what whoever it was told you?”
I nodded. Harold tried to take my hand. I brushed it aside.
“Joan, please…”
“I suppose ‘Joan’ isn’t really my name, is it?” I said, and the tears began to form again. I fought them back; I had cried so much in my life, and I was actually growing tired of it. Harold attempted to take my hand again, and he succeeded in grasping two of my fingers.
“I don’t think it’s in my place to tell you anything,” he murmured. “Because I don’t know much. Not much at all. Only Alfred knows.”
“What about Sam?” I demanded. “The guy who used to work at the pub?”
“I don’t think he really knew anything, either.”
“And my ‘relatives?’ What about them?”
There was some hesitation before Harold replied, his bright eyes dimming as they seemed to lose focus. Then he said, “Most likely they know. But Alfred most of all. He should know everything since the police took you to the hospital.”
“How was I when they found me?”
“Unconscious,” Harold whispered. “And half-alive.”
After that we were silent, but for some reason, I allowed him to walk with me, all the way back to Alfred’s cottage. Harold seemed willing to go, despite the atmosphere thickening around us, some sort of figurative mist accumulating in both our minds. Harold couldn’t know anything more than I did. I at least believed him, even if I still felt like I could never trust him with anything else. I took his hand gently, cautiously, finding it to be a stranger’s hand more so than a friend’s.
As we approached the valley where my house was, Harold silently turned to leave. It was clear that he was nervous about saying anything else, like he was worried that I’d become angry and verbally tear him apart. But as he walked away, I stopped him with one more question, one out of many.
“How many people know about this?”
Harold stopped and looked at me over his shoulder. He seemed reluctant to stay any longer. “Not very many, I think. A few police, the doctors…some boys…me and Alfred.”
“No one else?” I asked. Harold shook his head. “So they all hid it from me?”
“That, or they thought you already knew,” said the old man, and for the first time in a while, he smiled thinly, almost cynically. “You ever read Dickinson?”
“You may have read some to me,” I replied, confused by the change of subject in such a tense exchange.
Harold closed his eyes, inhaled, and recited from memory. A poet speaking the words of a poet. “How dreary to be somebody…how public like a frog…” He looked at me, smirking. “You remember that, before you do anything else.”
As he left me there, standing by the cottage, I had a vague idea of what he was trying to say. I knew Harold was trying to comfort me, to give Alfred some credit for hiding the truth from me for fear that I would be seen as a freak, as a strange entity in a small suburb. Either way, I didn’t know where I was from, or who I was; and as far I was concerned, nobody in Purley knew, either. And perhaps it would be a comfort to anyone else to have an identity, no matter whether or not it was real. But to me, keeping the name “Joan Engel,” if it wasn’t my name, meant it didn’t belong to me, and it never had.
I knew what I had to do either way, no matter how I approached it. I walked into my cottage quietly but attempted to put liveliness in my step. Alfred was on the couch, reading another of his old favorite books, the binding falling apart in his hands that were crinkled like paper. He heard me come in and raised his head to look at me. I tried to smile.
“Sorry about that. I just needed to clear my head,” I said. I walked toward him, most likely surprising him with my forwardness.
“Er…all right, then,” he said. “You feeling better?”
“Yeah,” I said, before a vague idea popped into my head. “You fancy maybe going on a drive through Reading?”
“A drive? “
“Yeah,” I said, grinning. “Like a little trip. Tomorrow, maybe. Change some things up.”
The look I received from Alfred was a puzzled one, but he did seem to consider it. Returning to his book, he flipped a page and said, “Well, I can’t see how it’ll hurt. What exactly did you want to do?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we can go to a museum, or the mediaeval borough. I’ve never been. Have you?”
“I suppose not.” To my relief and my satisfaction, I saw a smile dancing on Alfred’s lips as he set down his volume and heaved himself out of his chair. “Why not? It’ll be a day just for the two of us. It’ll help for you to get some more air.”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
I could feel the feigned cheerfulness in my voice, garishly noticeable in my ears. But it didn’t seem to faze Alfred at all. In truth, he seemed very happy, almost as if he were waiting for such an invitation. A bonding experience, he’d say, between grandfather and granddaughter. If only he knew my true intentions.
I stayed in my room for the rest of the day, thinking about how I’d carry out the plan formulating in my mind. I waited for Rupert or Bryce or anyone to tap at my window, demanding where I had been. But I think they all got the hint; the revelation they had given me would take time to digest, according to their logic. At the same time, I even practiced the great conversation, mouthing the words or whispering them as I looked into the mirror above my dresser. In my reflection, my hair stuck out as if it were attempting to give me a defiant air, an appropriate air. I felt my eyes watering from the very idea of this whole event unraveling. After all, I was scared. I was scared of a lot of things, but in the immediate moment, my plotting scared me most of all.
Because if I were to do this right, I could learn more about my true self than I ever thought I already knew. Tomorrow, I would confront Alfred, and I would force him to speak the truth. No matter what reasoning he had behind hiding it.
***
Alfred and I got into the car at nine o’clock the next morning. An hour before, we had had a quiet breakfast, but I could sense a sort of hyperactive energy from the old man as he ate his usual toast and mushrooms. I knew he was excited, in every sense of the word. He had even dressed for the occasion, donning a hat and a suit that he hadn’t worn in years. The dress shirt stretched over his belly and threatened to burst apart, sending buttons flying in every direction. The image would’ve made me laugh if my mind hadn’t been elsewhere, as I pulled on a sweater to combat the light drizzle that appropriately accompanied the morning.
The tires of the car squealed as they scraped their tracks onto the wet asphalt, leaving Purley behind as some of its inhabitants still slept in the Saturday fog. The weekend brought on a decent amount of traffic as the small suburb disappeared from sight in the rearview mirror, the wheels bouncing as Alfred and I wobbled in our seats. Alfred kept his hat in his lap, a small umbrella beside him in case we needed it. His chest rose and fell with the ragged breaths of an elderly man as his weathered hands gripped the steering wheel. How old was he now? Seventy-three? Five years had gone by in which I had lived with this man, a man who could turn out to be someone who I was never connected to.
We wove through the lines of cars like the street was a taut tapestry, the colors blurring in my vision as we picked up speed. The drizzle had turned into a light sprinkle, dotting the windows with speckled liquid crystal. The muffled sound of angry horns yelling as we passed by was faint in my mind. I looked at Alfred.
“So…” I started, and my breath caught in my throat. Alfred looked at me expectantly, his mustache bristling in the chilled air.
“What is it, Joan?”
I tried again. “I figured, now that we’re here, we could talk about a few things. One on one.”
Alfred stared. The intricate details of my plan were falling into place. I had wanted to catch him in as unfamiliar of a place as possible; our cottage in Purley would have been too much of a comfort. This was the logic I had gotten as a student, my whole experience shoving psychological tips into my brain. This was perfect…almost too perfect. I had him quiet, and right where I wanted him.
“Is there anything you’d like to tell me, Alfred?”
“I beg your pardon?”
His words were labored, separated with sharp breaths. I had startled him, just as I had done with Harold the day before. I repeated, “Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”
“You called me Alfred,” whispered my “grandfather.”
The tires screeched as we turned a corner. The rain was coming down faster and harder. I could see the windshield wipers slashing at the rivulets of water like blades.
“I did,” I muttered, and I could feel my heart rattling my ribcage like the bars of a prison cell. “Because I don’t know what else I should call you.”
“Well, call me Grandpa, Joan!” uttered Alfred, his eyes bulging. “You’ve always called me that. There’s no need to be formal.”
“I’m not trying to be formal.”
I felt the car jolt and bounce on the street. A brash honk from a full bus pierced my ears as it whipped past us. Alfred’s driving was becoming shakier; I was upsetting him.
“I’ve reason to believe,” I said, the dramatic words tasting odd in my mouth, “that you’ve been hiding some things from me. That you’ve maybe…done more than stretch the truth about how I got here, and how you know me.”
“What’re you talking about?” demanded Alfred, but I furiously shushed him.
“I ask the questions! You answer them! Understood?”
It was clear that my sharpness was disorienting the old man, who had to combat the downpour as well as the heightened pitches of my voice. He abruptly turned left. I clung to my seat but didn’t take my eyes off the man I was interrogating.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Alfred asked. I could see his face going white, even his large red nose losing color as he tried to pay attention to the road ahead of him. “Did you bring me out here to play a joke on me?”
“No,” I said, my teeth clenched.
“Then what is this?”
“If you let me ask the questions, you’ll find out! Why am I here? Why did you decide to follow me to the hospital?”
“What are you talking about? I told you, I recognized you when they pulled you from the car wreckage.”
“You’re a liar!” I snarled, and another horn shrieked at us as we spun into the adjacent lane.
“Joan, please!” hollered Alfred, his voice stifled by the din of the drumming rain. I extended my hand and felt my fingers grasp the collar of his jacket. I wanted to pull him toward me, to bring him closer so he could smell my breath on his face. I spoke softly but furiously, my words slightly muddled.
“Answer me this, Alfred. If not anything else, answer me this.” I could feel this one particular question shove all the others aside, taking the spotlight and listening to the whispers of an imaginary audience. Waiting, watching. “Am I really who you say I am?”
He blinked. All Alfred could do for me was blink. “What?”
“Am I…” I paused the words. “…really….” Hands pressed against the man’s shoulder, clinging to his coat sleeve. “…who you say I am?”
Alfred’s mouth opened. It was all I saw. I didn’t see the flash of streetlights, or hear the traffic thunderously protesting against us, the sharp jumps and tilts of the car as it whipped around wet streets like a roller coaster on slippery tracks. I could only see Alfred’s lips part, his tongue flutter in his mouth like a damp, loose leaf. I could only hear his choked voice, as the steering column pivoted in his hands.
“I…” He couldn’t say anything else, as the car spun out of control and collided into a truck pulling out of a nearby lane.
I ducked from flying glass and rain kicked up from under the tires, pressing myself against the door as the driver’s side folded in like cheap aluminium. The entire outside world was nothing but mist and water, white and gray as I covered my head, feeling the familiar scar by my ear. I heard the screeching of a bus’s tires; from my peripheral vision, I saw Alfred’s frozen expression as the frame of the car closed over him, the glass tearing his suit as the propulsion ripped his fingers from the steering wheel.
I know that I tried to scream; if I hadn’t been in a car accident before, I was in one now. But nothing came from my throat; no sound emerged. I could only open my mouth, let the air pass in and out of it. There was no breath to create a scream, only the harsh silence from my lips as I felt the right side of the car crumple against a lamppost, the rest of it swiveling out into the street like the needle of a compass. I heard the squealing of brakes from behind us, the smell of a dusty airbag bursting to life. I waited for the worst.
It didn’t come. Just as I had screamed a silent scream, the car had come to a silent rest, its body battered and broken. I smelled oil and smoke from the engine, water polluted with a rubbery stench as the rain continued to hammer down on the roof. I uncovered my head, shaking shards of glass from my tousled hair as I did so. But I remained huddled in my seat, pulling my face away from the deflating airbag that had attempted to envelope me and keep me alive.
I ran a hand across my collarbone and my fingers grew wet. A mix of water and blood was shimmering on my palm, like a crimson mirror that was almost capable of displaying my reflection. A large piece of glass must have hit me, for as I traced the origin of the blood, I could feel the gaping gash, an open crevasse in my flesh, practically cut down to the bone. But I couldn’t feel any pain, no stiffness in my neck where I had been injured. Instead I felt abstract things, like the time pass by in a frozen world, imaginary clocks ticking in my mind. I turned to the driver’s seat and retched.
Alfred sat contorted in the creases of the car’s frame, the metal outlining his twisted posture. I saw the dark red streaming from his head and neck, painting his face and mustache like a bizarre piece of art that the Museum of Reading would never have been able to offer. Then I threw up loudly on the plush carpeting of the car floor to the loud melody of the ambulances’ sirens.
***
There are three different kinds of people in the world: Those who find themselves straightaway, those who find themselves through experience, and those who never find themselves at all.
To them, seeking identity is a journey. To find oneself, according to philosophers and writers, is what the human experience is all about. Whether it’s described as a train ride, a walk down a forked road, or wandering in the brush of a forest shrouded in fog from the nearest hilltops.
But I can safely say that few of them, if any at all, needed to walk back up the road, or ride a train back to the first station. I can safely say that none of them had to start their journey over.
Perhaps it is foolish to rely on others to discover one’s identity. But the sad reality of the world is that it is the only way you can begin your discovery. It all starts with a background, a heritage, an ancestry. Your family is the one who helps you onto the train platform, handing you your luggage, before waving and dabbing at their eyes with handkerchiefs before your vision is blocked with the coal smoke of the train as you disappear down the rickety railroad tracks.
I didn’t have anyone to fall back on. I had to start with a blank easel, to paint the background as well as the person within it. I had to work harder than anyone else in the whole of England, perhaps in the entire world. But I wasn’t going to give up.
Even when I woke up in the hospital an hour after the accident in Reading had occurred, I was already determined to find answers.
***
“Well, Miss Engel, it looks like you avoided the worst of the crash. Consider yourself lucky.”
I stared into the doctor’s face, listening to the scratching of a pen as he scribbled notes onto a clipboard. The black stitches near my collarbone drew my flesh tight around my throat, creating an odd feeling like something was continually pulling on my skin. I lay on my back on the hospital bed, with familiar walls of white threatening to swallow me whole. I had immediately recognized where I was when I was carried from the ambulance; I was back in Royal Berkshire Hospital, but I couldn’t recognize any of the nurses or doctors who tended to me. There was no use interrogating them. They wouldn’t know anything about me.
The doctor in question had digested the false claims on my so-called identification card like a cheap lunch once I had regained consciousness. I could picture my information on the paper in front of him: JOAN ENGEL, AGE 15, BLOOD TYPE B+, LEGAL GUARDIAN: ALFRED ENGEL. The only thing I could trust from that data was the science in it, and the fact that I could only trust something as insignificant to me as my ruddy blood type baffled me.
Now, three days after the accident, I was still in the hospital, constantly being reminded that I was well enough to leave the next day if I so desired. When he finished writing, the doctor grinned at me. I read his nametag. “Doctor Keating?”
“What is it, Miss Engel?”
I struggled not to react to what he called me. My muscles felt tight in my chest and my arms as I sat up, the thick IV needle digging into my vein. “Do you know where Alfred is?”
Doctor Keating’s smile faded quickly, his brow creasing and wrinkling his large, dark forehead. “I’m afraid that your grandfather is in very critical condition. We have several people taking care of him, but he’s not doing the greatest, since he took most of the impact in the crash.”
“Can he still speak?”
“…Coherently, but painfully.” Doctor Keating set his clipboard down and went to switching the bag for the IV. He seemed to read my mind, though. “If you want to see him, you’re going to have to wait. Unless he shows some improvement, I think any visitors would upset him.”
I pressed him further. “Has anyone else come to see him?”
It was as if someone had overheard me because before Doctor Keating could answer, a young male nurse entered the room. From the looks of it, he was probably an intern; he seemed relatively fresh-faced as he approached, his cheeks flushed most likely from running about the halls on his mentors’ orders.
“Miss Engel’s relatives are here to see her, doctor,” he said curtly, his hands fiddling with his scrubs. He cast me a quick glance, as if the idea of seeing a patient stitched up nauseated him.
Doctor Keating looked at me, waiting for my approval. I swallowed sharply, fighting the growing lump in my throat. The idea of seeing my “relatives,” the people I had grown to love throughout the years, frightened me; already I could feel my insides twisting up, the things I wanted to say scratching at my vocal chords, demanding to be heard. I got déjà vu then, as I said nothing, but only slowly nodded to the doctor. Homage to my last experience here, I assumed. Keating in turn nodded to the intern, who went to open the door for a red-eyed Edna and a stone-faced Calvin.
At the sight of me in the hospital bed, Edna immediately burst into tears, making her eyes look like broken dams as she reached for a tissue. It couldn’t have been the first time she had cried that day, I thought, considering that her entire face was puffed out and red and raw from all the sobbing for her brother. I craned my neck to see one of my cousins, Tony, enter in a sports jacket and looking like he had run from his office in Newtown just to see his uncle and me. As a result, he looked worn out but surprisingly neutral about the whole thing, serving as the balance between his parents as Edna rushed to embrace me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the doctor and the nurse leaving the vicinity, though I wasn’t sure if it was due to respecting some family privacy or simply due to the fact that a sobbing elderly woman in a floral dress unnerved them.
“Oh, Joan, darling!” I heard her whimper into my ear as she kissed my forehead over and over again. As she pulled away, I could smell lipstick and hair dye, as well as wet mascara as she wiped away the black streaks from her wrinkled face with her tissue.
“Hello, Aunt Edna,” I said weakly.
“How fortunate for you to be all right! How I wish I could say the same for your grandfather. The doctors say he’s doing so poorly, and any visitors could disorient him!” Edna then turned to Calvin and Tony as if for approval. She received silent nods in reply.
“Did they tell you how he’s doing?” I asked. Edna broke down into dramatic sobs again, but Tony spoke for her.
“They say he’s got some broken bones,” he said. “Ribs and both legs, mostly. And that he’s lost a lot of blood.”
“It’s my fault this happened,” I mumbled, as I turned over on my side and faced the opposing wall.
And I considered myself to be partially right. In a way, it had been my fault, but I was curious to see how the three would react. I could only hear Calvin’s inhalations through his nostrils until Edna seized my arm and pulled me to her breast. Now the smell of cheap perfume was in my nose and I struggled not to cough.
“Oh, no, it’s not your fault, not at all,” she wept. “Your grandfather…well, since he’s gotten older, he’s been losing coordination, and Calvin can agree with me when I say he was never the best driver. Isn’t that right, Calvin, dear?”
“Sure,” my great-uncle mumbled, and I shook my head fervently at this, feeling the stitches strain against my neck.
“No, you don’t understand. I distracted him, and it was raining. That’s why he lost control of the wheel.”
There was a silence at my brief confession, and to my surprise, Calvin was the one who spoke, brushing past a still weepy Edna. From a distance, I could see his jaw set behind his white beard, his dark eyebrows furrowing.
“What were you doing before the car crashed?” he asked.
I suddenly shuddered; I felt intimidated by my great-uncle for the first time, like he was interrogating me. It was like I was staring into the face of the jowl-faced male investigator as he probed me for a name, any name. I swallowed what little saliva I had left on my tongue before speaking.
“I was just asking him about some things. Important things.”
“Like?” Calvin’s voice was deep and stern, but for a moment, I thought I heard a bit of shakiness in his timbre.
“You know, like…like if he was really my grandfather.” I tried to say it as casually as possible. It didn’t work.
“Oh, my goodness!” Edna gasped, as if she were horrified by such an assumption. She clutched her purse tightly and dabbed at her lips as Calvin nodded and turned to his son, who was now standing in the corner of the room.
“Tony, take your mother back to the waiting room. I’d like to talk with Joan.”
While Tony nodded, Edna stared at her husband with a gaping mouth. “Now, Calvin, I don’t think…”
“Alone,” emphasized Calvin, and he swept a pointing finger toward the door.
It was as though Tony were leading a whining dog out of the room by the way Edna sounded, as she muffled her moans with her now tattered mess of a tissue. Calvin closed the door behind them, the soft click of the steel knob being the only sound in the room besides the hum of the machines around my bed. Then he approached me, arms folded across the fabric of his buttoned tweed jacket, and he looked at me. I had never really taken a look at his eyes before and was amazed by how green they were, perusing my features before settling on my fingers, the scars contrasting against the white sheets.
Calvin broke his gaze temporarily to grab a chair and drag it to the side of the bed. He sat at my left, observing me, and I knew he was expecting me to say something. When I didn’t speak, he lifted a hand and, ignoring my wincing, ran his fingers across my temples where the large, unshapely scar was hidden underneath my hair.
“So the secret’s out,” he said coolly, yet his face read something similar to relief. “You finally confronted Alfred about why you’re here.”
I blinked. “Well, sort of.”
“But you know anyway, don’t you?” asked Calvin. “Even without him telling you outright. Don’t you?”
I didn’t reply for a moment, but despite that, I knew what he meant. And he was right. “So it’s true,” I managed to say. “Alfred’s not really my grandfather.”
The slow nod I received sent my heart scampering into my throat. It was a hesitant nod, but a resolved one.
“I didn’t want to say anything in front of your aunt and cousin,” Calvin continued, and I stared as he leaned back in his chair, the plastic backing crackling against his shoulders. “Edna is obviously very upset about her brother’s condition, and anything else would just break her.”
“So you knew?” I asked. My voice felt strangled in my throat, my tongue painfully dry. “You were part of this whole façade?”
“Of course I knew!” Calvin exclaimed suddenly. “All of Alfred’s relatives knew. We agreed to take on the role of your family for as long as he took care of you, until…”
“Until what?”
Calvin paused, sighing. “Well, until the police found any leads about where you came from. And why.”
His calmness in confessing all of this disturbed me. In fact, I sensed a sort of relief from him as he said it, like it was a burden he was lifting off his shoulders. I rose from my pillow, staring at my alleged great-uncle with my eyes stinging.
“But why didn’t you just tell me? Why didn’t Alfred just say what happened and that the police would take care of everything?”
“My brother-in-law was already pulling a lot of strings when he convinced the local authorities to let him obtain custody,” said Calvin. “I didn’t like it one bit. You think I didn’t want to tell you the truth? He decided everything before we even had a chance to protest. If we said a word out of line, he threatened to break ties with us. And I didn’t want to break up the family. My wife loves Alfred very much, and so do my kids.”
I let the information sink in before asking another question I believed was crucial. “So…is that why you didn’t speak to me much?”
I saw Calvin’s face sink in, a deep exhalation emitting from his lips like a defeated moan. For the first time that day, he seemed too guilty to look at me. “I never wanted to be distant from you, Joan,” he said. “I was just worried that I’d slip up and end up spilling the beans in front of everyone. Alfred had me on a very short leash. He knew that if anyone were going to say anything, I’d be the first to speak up. Besides…he tended to cast a pretty evil glare at me whenever I attempted to speak to you.”
“Did he?” I asked, slightly amused, and I began to remember the moments that I had passed off as nothing too serious. I just always thought that Alfred was a bit protective of me; he tended to glare at everyone who tried to affiliate with me. But at this point, it was starting to make sense.
Calvin grinned. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice before.”
“So now what?” I asked. “What do I do now? I know my name isn’t ‘Joan Engel.’ It never has been. So now what do I do?”
“What you mean? Joan Engel can be your name if you’d like it to be.”
“But I don’t want that name!” I cried in a sharp outburst. The veins in my neck pumped blood fiercely, firing up my mind as I became emotional. I began to gesticulate as I talked, to almost act out my situation to Calvin. “It’s not mine. It’s Alfred’s mother’s name, given to me by his imaginary son!”
“Now, Joan…” Calvin tried to say, but I wasn’t stopping while I was ahead.
“You have the comfort of knowing that your name was given to you and it belongs to you. I don’t! I know that my real family’s out there, most likely thinking I’m dead, and I don’t even know my real name!”
“Joan, I…”
“Who am I?” I suddenly asked, that broad, vague question penetrating my thoughts. “Do you have any idea who I could possibly be? Or what my real name is?”
It was at that moment that I received the answer that was unacceptable, intolerable, at least in my perspective. I remember every detail, every aspect of that moment. I know that the lights were bright, humming, as the IV slurped nutrients into my arteries. I felt the summer heat around me, combating the sparse air conditioning in the room. I remember every change of expression in Calvin’s face as the options for his response must have raced through his head: to comfort or not to comfort, to be blunt or not to be so. The answer was spoken in a low tone, a regretful tone, like a priest as he comforts a mourner at a funeral. The horrible, unspeakable truth.
“I don’t know, Joan. I don’t know.”
I collapsed back against my pillow, the bed frame rattling beneath my small figure. I breathed in and out, waiting for the typical tears of hopelessness and desperation that I had become so accustomed to in the past five years. Surprisingly, no tears came. I didn’t sob, or groan in anguish, or even whimper. I simply lay there, defeated, and sprawled in a tangled mess of white sheets. I listened to Calvin’s voice while it seemed to echo in the caverns of my mind.
“You realize, Joan, that I tried to convince myself that this was best for you,” he was saying. No, he was pleading to me. “You were so young back then. Imagine how you would have felt to hear that you were found in a coffin, of all places! I couldn’t believe it when I first heard it, and you know what? I didn’t want to believe it. I was fine with living a lie so long as you were happy, and that you had a childhood that was as normal as possible. I didn’t want you to be some spectacle that one would find in a museum.”
“Is that it?” I mumbled, my voice thin. “You wanted me to live a normal life?”
Calvin nodded. “The few who knew about your situation didn’t say a word. I know that they’re still working on your case, looking for anyone who could have lost a child or had a daughter allegedly pass away in the last few years. The police even updated Alfred every few months. They’ve found nothing, Joan. And I don’t think your knowing the truth could have helped you out much.”
“But you could have helped me search,” I protested.
“Oh, c’mon, Joan. Old people like me, being detectives?” Calvin laughed, and oddly enough, it seemed to lighten the tension. I actually felt a smile on my lips, even if it diminished quickly like a flame in a storm. “You have to admit, Joan, that this is the most we could do for you…let you live comfortably, with shelter and friends and people you loved. Isn’t that how you wanted to live, and not in some orphanage?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But not without knowing who I am.”
Calvin fell silent at this. It had been the most he had ever spoken to me, or really to anyone in most of his life. He had always been a quieter man, and I knew that this whole exchange had exhausted him. In fact, the whole experience had. As he stood up from the chair, he looked down upon me, that same muddled look on his face. It was like he didn’t know how exactly to feel, and he was not a man who was going to sugarcoat this. It was all an insane puzzle that no one knew how to put together – or more accurately, that no one could find the missing pieces for.
We both remained frozen for some time before the door swung open and Doctor Keating entered again. His brow was beaded with sweat, but he surprisingly wore a toothy grin as he walked into the room. His attention went to Calvin immediately.
“Good news. It looks like Mister Engel has positively responded to treatment, so you are free to see him in a few hours if the patient agrees to it.” The doctor then turned to me. “Miss Engel, I’ve arranged with your relatives to allow them temporary custody of you when your grandfather is still here. You’re free to go tomorrow morning.”
Thank God, I thought to myself as the doctor checked on the equipment leeching off of me and left the room. I had had enough time in a hospital to last me for years; it was almost becoming a second home. I propped myself on one elbow as Calvin turned to follow Doctor Keating, his hand reaching for the door as it swung closed.
“Uncle Calvin?”
He stiffened, most likely a reaction to the use of the word “uncle,” but I didn’t know what else to call him. He turned to me and let the door thud beside him, watching me lift the covers from my body. “What is it, Joan?”
“I want you to do me a favor,” I said, “when I leave the hospital tomorrow. You’ll be driving me to my place first, right? To get some things?”
Calvin nodded. I breathed deeply.
“Leave me there.”
“You can’t be serious,” Calvin suddenly snapped, as I swung my legs off the mattress and pulled myself out of bed. I had gotten tired of lying down and wanted to move as far as the IV would let me.
“Of course I’m serious. Do you really think I’m going to stay in Purley?” I asked.
“Well…yes! We all expect that.”
“Not on your life,” I said firmly, shaking my head. In the back of my mind, however, my conscience was screaming at me, begging me to come to my senses. But I kept going. “I don’t belong in Purley anymore. You have to understand. I need to find where I come from. I need to find my real home.”
“I won’t leave you there.”
“Fine,” I retorted. “I’ll just leave from your house instead. You can’t just chain me to my bed and expect me to stay.”
“But where on Earth do you think you’ll start?” demanded Calvin. “And with what on you?”
“I’ve got enough pocket money,” I countered, only furthering my logical side’s protests. “It’s enough to buy a few train tickets, to go traveling a bit.”
“How do you expect to find your family when you have no idea where you come from?” barked Calvin. “Joan, look at you. You’re fifteen years old and not even five feet tall. You can’t possibly get a job or find a place to stay while you’re looking for answers. Why, you could get yourself in serious danger. Think rationally.”
But I couldn’t think rationally. I wouldn’t let myself do so. Any journey to find one’s self had never been observed as rational, not by anyone in his or her right mind. Already the consequences were jumping around in my head, and I shut them down and focused on my planned journey, or rather, my quest.
I walked toward Calvin, stopping halfway across the room, and took his hand. His fingers felt cool on my sweaty palm, the skin pulled tight across his knuckles and exposing long blue veins interlacing each other like spider webs. I could tell that he couldn’t believe my determination, and in truth, I didn’t believe it, either. But what else could I do? How could I return to Purley-on-Thames without all those damn questions tormenting me?
“You’ll do this for me, won’t you, Uncle Calvin? Please.” I squeezed his hand, feeling the blood in our fingers pump simultaneously between each other. “I’d think you’d be the only one of the Engels to really understand.”
And I was right. Alfred and Edna had been completely and totally average people. So had I, as best as I could be, anyway, until this moment. I knew that the man before me had created his own adventures. According to Edna’s stories during our many suppers together, Calvin had been a pilot, and a good one, before settling down after his vision began to go bad. He had known the consequences of traveling, especially alone. A war veteran, an explorer – he had witnessed the things that his wife and brother-in-law didn’t seem to care about. He had discovered who he truly was and what he loved, something I wanted to do more than anything in the world now, even if it meant running out of Royal Berkshire in hospital garb.
Calvin’s grip tightened on my hand for a moment, then slackened. It did not seem to be a defeated gesture; in fact, it seemed to be a resolved one, a compliant one. He looked at me calmly, almost casually. I could see the faint outlines of a smile.
Not moving, the man who had been my great-uncle for five years said, “If you need any help out there, call me. You have our phone number.”
Before he could say anything else, I had thrown my arms around his neck, pulling him into a powerful embrace and planting a kiss on his cheek. He responded awkwardly at first before returning the hug, burying his face into my hair. It was the first time I had ever embraced Calvin, and oddly enough, I hoped that it wouldn’t be the last. I knew, as I breathed in the dusty smell of his jacket and the subtle lotion on his face, that he would be the only man I could truly regard as a family member, even if he was not related to me. He would always be my great-uncle, a friend I could count on. He had wanted to be there for me since the beginning, and even with some reluctance, he wanted to support me now.
“Thank you,” I managed to say before I felt my face dampen. This time, however, the tears were not coming from me.
I do not remember how long we held each other in that silence. Only the beep of the heart rate monitor was our clock, ticking away the time we spent in that hospital room together, surrounded by walls of pearly white.
***
Calvin drove me back home the night I was released from the hospital. Edna insisted that she stay by Alfred’s side, though unbeknownst to her, I would not be seeing him myself. It took all of my will power to simply follow Calvin to his car, as the doorway to Alfred’s hospital room faded from my view. I would never see or speak to Alfred again; I no longer had any wish to demand the truth from him, not even in the days before he died nine years later. I had simply no motive to confront him anymore.
I didn’t know why it was so hard for me to forgive him, back then and for several years after. After all, he hadn’t married or had children, and having me in his life probably made the last five years the happiest. But for some reason, the idea of his simply marching in and making up stories to get me to be his granddaughter pained and confused me. It was a bothersome sore in my mind, constantly warding away the idea of contacting him ever again. I remember crying when I learned that he died, though, and my husband taking me in his arms and comforting me as we sat on the living room couch while I clutched the phone. But fourteen years earlier, there I was, leaving him for good, with every bit of hesitation disappearing.
Calvin convinced me to stay in West Reading for a while, and he treated me to dinner in a local pub, similar to what Alfred had consistently done with me in Purley. I didn’t really eat, but I appreciated the companionship while Calvin dabbed at the remaining sauce on his empty plate with chips and refused the consistent offer of Guinness. He drove better than Alfred ever did, the road feeling smooth beneath us as we silently moved through the rush hour traffic back to the outskirts of Reading’s urban area.
It was dusk when we passed the Thames, and for some reason, I felt an urge to return to it. Hearing how much of a role it had had on my past and my current situation had been discomforting, and I figured that after all this, I’d never want to go near the river or any body of water again, for that matter. Still, I couldn’t help watching the water moving as the sun dipped below the valley, leaving the muddy surface of the river dim and somber. I suddenly wondered if I should teach myself how to swim.
Calvin stopped by my cottage, and as I opened the door, I felt my great-uncle take my hand and place a wad of something into it. I extended my fingers to find about ten twenty-pound notes, all crisply folded and held together with a rubber band, stretched across my palm. I shook my head at the offering, peered up at Calvin’s watering eyes.
“No,” I whispered. “I can’t.”
“Take it,” he said. “You’ll need it.” And he took me in his arms and kissed me on the forehead.
I pulled myself out of the car, straightening the sleeve of my sweater and carefully pushing the money into my pocket. As Calvin drove off, I couldn’t help watching him go, the worn out blue paint on his car meshing with the night skies that seemed to move like dark velvet. I breathed in the dust the tires kicked up, the smell of the engine as it spluttered in the calm atmosphere of the suburb. I let myself stand there, quietly, contemplatively, before turning toward the cottage, its usual lit up windows dark and empty. Staring at it without the comfort of calling it my home made me feel, for the first time in a while, very lonely.
Still, I forced myself to walk to the house, to unlock the door with the spare key Calvin had given me. I forced myself to move about the rooms for the last time, ignoring the stacks of old books that Alfred had read, the dishes he had set out in the kitchen to wash, the walls that had supported me when I woke from my nightmares. I forced myself to go into my room, to approach my closet and start pulling out my best clothes and throw them into a pile. I forced myself to get my things from the bathroom and my sturdiest shoes from under my dresser. I threw it all in a small bag I found in Alfred’s room, after I had dumped all the fishing hooks, lures, and tins of bait onto the faded rug.
I packed little, as I figured it would be best to travel light. All at once, my mind began to race, and I began to feel the color rushing from my cheeks. It was easy for me to prepare to leave, to go on a journey to find what I had lost. But what wasn’t easy was where to start. As soon as I zipped up the bag, I collapsed onto my bed and breathed deeply, in and out. Time must have passed by quickly as I sat, the night hours approaching with heavy footsteps, but I had to think. I had to actually plan something, or else I’d find myself wandering.
I stood up and went back to Alfred’s room. A bus schedule lay folded on his nightstand, and I picked it up and opened it. Alfred had always gotten the latest bus schedules when he went out but had never bothered to take the buses at all; still, his habit would prove a convenience for me. The last bus to West Reading would be at eight o’clock in the evening; otherwise, I would have to wait until morning. And despite my hesitation to outline everything, I was not becoming any more patient.
Folding up the schedule, I stuck it in into my pocket, while at the same time moving to grab an old wallet from the top drawer in Alfred’s dresser. He had always kept his old things, and now I knew I could utilize one of them after rummaging through the dresser for fun when I was a child. I put my hidden savings, as well as Calvin’s money, into the wallet before stuffing it into my jeans, ignoring the large bulge it created on my thigh. I checked the time. Seven twenty-three. My mouth went dry.
I stood there for a moment, frozen in my preparations. My packed bag lay by my feet, my sweater clinging to my perspiring back and still quite flat chest. I tried to imagine what I looked like, a wild looking girl with stitches in her neck who could pass off as a hobo. I breathed deeply again, inhaling and exhaling. Time to go, at long last. I couldn’t hesitate any longer.
Swinging my bag over my shoulder, I marched to the door and flung it open, just in time to collide with Rupert. Even in the night, I knew it was him; the lights I had turned on in the cottage had given away my return. Obviously he had been worried about me, especially when I was in the hospital again. I imagined him standing by the darkened house each night, waiting for me to come home. I suddenly felt a warmth in my chest just thinking about it.
As my vision re-focused from literally running into Rupert, I was amazed to see how disheveled and exhausted he looked. He seemed to have grown three years older in the time span of two weeks, his chin dotted with stubble and his eyes sunken in. He looked me up and down tirelessly, eyeing my bag and my clothes, my frizzy hair and then the black embroidery on my collarbone. He opened his mouth to speak, stuttered, and tried again.
“Joan, I…”
It was as if I had become a victim of animalistic instinct, or perhaps it was the moment serving as such dramatic fodder – for as Rupert spoke, I dropped my bag, rose to the tip of my toes, and kissed him long on the lips. As I pulled away, I could hear his gasp for breath, then my own puffing for air, as I silently threw my arms around him, holding him tightly, not being able to speak. I felt his hands, callused from tree climbing and playing cricket and swimming, rest against the small of my back, his whiskered cheek against mine.
I pulled away from him slowly, reluctantly. He seemed disappointed as I did so, before I placed a hand on his jaw. I did not feel romance brew up in me; I did not hear my conscience clamoring for him to come with me, to be my companion as I searched for who I really was. I was not in love with Rupert – but I did love him. I moved to pick up my bag and threw it back across my shoulder.
“I’ll write to you,” I whispered, before Rupert could speak.
“Joan,” Rupert began, but I was already walking away, heading in the direction of the nearest bus stop. I turned back to look at him, and he hadn’t moved.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for helping me.”
And I turned around again and didn’t look back. I knew he stood there the whole time watching me go, until I faded into the darkening August night. I knew his mind must have been racing, feeling the kiss still warm on his lips. I knew he wanted to say something, anything to me, but he didn’t have to. He knew I had to do this alone. He had his identity and a future to look forward to because of his identity. And he knew that the truth he had given me would not fade away in the back of my mind, but rather had shaped me into a person who was different than the childhood friend he had always known.
I never forgot Rupert throughout the years. I still e-mail him, and we’ve been able to see each other again occasionally. But at that point, he was part of my past because that night, I left Purley-on-Thames. I left Leighton Park School. I left Bryce, Luke, Ivan, and all the rest of the boys. I left Harold, who was probably sleeping in his chair with a half-finished draft of his poetry lying on his desk. I left my relatives, wondering how Edna would react to such an audacious act by her husband. I left Alfred, still lying on that hospital bed, probably wondering if I was okay. But most important, I left Joan Engel behind, the name only a memory to me. I left it all for good.
And I never went back.
However, seeing as this is Whims of the Time Traveler, it's a perfect example of my first attempt at long fiction, so I've decided to unabashedly display it.
Have fun.
Untitled: Chapter Six
by Belinda Roddie
“Joan?”
I didn’t answer.
“Joan?”
It was useless to ignore Alfred; I had been attempting to ignore him throughout breakfast, but I knew that he was going to force a response out of me even if he had to repeat my name like a parrot. I looked up at him in acknowledgement.
“You haven’t eaten anything,” Alfred was saying, looking over his newspaper with his eyes welling with a sort of concern that seemed almost exaggerated to me. “You’ve just been picking at it. Are you all right?”
“Sure,” I mumbled.
“You didn’t have that dream again, did you?”
“No.” He wasn’t going to get any more out of me. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
It had been three days since the boys had shown me the coffin, but of course it seemed longer to me. The effect had probably been exaggerated by the fact that I wouldn’t leave my bed for two of those days. Alfred had come into my room and I had pulled the sheets over my head. I didn’t want to look at him, or anybody. I told him that I was sick; he offered to bring me tea. I told him I just needed quiet.
I couldn’t stand having Alfred gazing at me in that concerned, almost perplexed fashion any longer, so I pushed my plate away and stood up. “I’m going to take a walk.”
“But Joan, you haven’t eaten.”
“I know. I’m not hungry,” I replied.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m fine, Grandpa,” I said as I whipped past him and out the door.
But in reality, I didn’t think I should call him Grandpa anymore. He had hidden the truth from me, actually fabricated a story to hide the truth from me, and of course, all of my trust in him was gone. If he had lied about how I had gotten here, what else could he have been lying about for the past five years? I didn’t think of an answer to that question. I didn’t want to think of one.
Maybe he just didn’t want to tell me that I had been found in a coffin, I thought to myself as I walked. The very idea of it made me shudder. I was almost repulsed. I felt inhuman, like I didn’t belong. I passed houses that stood quietly, casting their observing shadows over my silhouette like they wanted to comfort me. It wasn’t happening. Every question I had had in the past was coming back to me in full force; all the questions I thought were answered. Now I couldn’t believe what I had been told anymore. Alfred wouldn’t be able to convince me of anything now.
And to make matters worse, I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to confront my so-called grandfather, get the truth out of him at last. I wanted to see if he could confess, and perhaps, if life was kind to me, he’d simply tell me that he thought it was too morbid or bizarre of a story to tell me that I was found, of all things, on a raft in a coffin on the river. But even then, new questions would arise from that confession. If he were my grandfather, he had to have some idea of how it could’ve happened, and who would ever put me in a coffin, and why such a strange situation could have come up. Was I meant to have died? Was it all just a trick? What in the world had happened that day, and why had everyone else but me known about it?
I found myself at the river again. I had half a mind to look for a decayed raft, its wood rotting in the mud of the Thames. I didn’t find anything. I didn’t feel like punting or doing anything for that matter. I simply sat down, the wet grass soaking into the bottom of my jeans. I didn’t care, only watching the ripples in the brown surface of the river, the currents sucking all the remnants of my past away, all the answers.
My silence was interrupted by the sound of footsteps, flattening the greenery with suppressed thumps against the hardened soil. I turned to look and was immediately met with the glare of the summer sun. I saw an old man’s shadow limping toward me.
“All right there, Joan?” a familiar voice wheezed. I heard a rustling as Harold’s boots stopped beside me. Raising my head, I saw his white hair turning to gold in the light.
“Hey, Harold,” I murmured, trying to not to pay much attention to him. I hoped he’d get the message that I wanted to be left alone. It didn’t work.
“Good to see you out and about, lass,” Harold said as he looked down at me, his eyes crinkling as he gave me a warm smile. “Your granddad said you were more than a mite ill. Stayed in bed for a few nights. You doing better?”
“Fine,” I replied. “I’m fine.”
I turned my face away, twirling one particularly long grass blade around my index finger, wincing as it grazed the scarred flesh. A moment later, Harold sat down beside me, shuffling about and groaning audibly as he did so. I heard his knees squeal in protest, but regardless, he stayed down there, his legs crossed, his eyes intently burning into the side of my head as if attempting to penetrate my skull and read my mind.
“Something wrong, Joan?” he asked.
I couldn’t help smiling; his kindness seemed like a joke. “When did Alfred tell you to start calling me Joan?”
I knew he was startled without looking at him. I could picture his widened eyes, gaping mouth, but even if he didn’t look like that, I could sense the shock from him. If anything, he would think I was being audacious. “What’s this? I thought you called him Grandpa?”
“I don’t know if I should anymore,” I said before my emotions began to swell in my chest. I turned to finally look Harold full in the face, my eyes burning into each wrinkle and crease into his jaw and brow. “How long have you known?”
Harold blinked. “Known what?”
“Known how I got here. Known they found me in a ruddy casket. In the river.” I couldn’t help growling; my voice was constricted in my throat, held in an invisible vice. “It wasn’t a car crash, was it? Was it?”
“I…”
“And don’t lie to me. I already know.”
His mouth opening and closing silently, Harold attempted to stammer out words. I imagined a half-assed excuse, perhaps a move to blame Alfred; that he didn’t know, that he wasn’t there. But nothing he’d say wouldn’t go under my scrutiny. I’d know if he was making up the story. I’d know if he was lying. When Harold finally spoke, I could tell he was trying to do so with utmost clarity, but I could hear the shaking in his voice.
“I don’t know who told you, or why, but it was none of your business,” he said. “It wasn’t important.”
“Wasn’t important?” I repeated, feeling my eyebrows shoot up, my lips part in a choked laugh. “You think it wasn’t important? What else have you hidden from me, Harold? Do you know who my parents were? They didn’t disappear, did they? They could be close by, huh? What’s the truth? What do you know?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” I snapped.
“Nothing,” Harold reiterated, his voice dry and forced. The bones in his legs rattled as he attempted to get up, his breathing harsh as he stood. “Only how we found you.”
“So it’s true,” I whispered. “You know where I come from.”
“I didn’t say that,” mumbled Harold, and for the first time, I heard a sense of desperation in his voice. He suddenly looked around, like he was checking if anybody was there to hear his words. The place was almost dead, it was so quiet. “I said I know how we found you. Nothing else.”
“…In a coffin?”
“Yes. On a raft. Is that what whoever it was told you?”
I nodded. Harold tried to take my hand. I brushed it aside.
“Joan, please…”
“I suppose ‘Joan’ isn’t really my name, is it?” I said, and the tears began to form again. I fought them back; I had cried so much in my life, and I was actually growing tired of it. Harold attempted to take my hand again, and he succeeded in grasping two of my fingers.
“I don’t think it’s in my place to tell you anything,” he murmured. “Because I don’t know much. Not much at all. Only Alfred knows.”
“What about Sam?” I demanded. “The guy who used to work at the pub?”
“I don’t think he really knew anything, either.”
“And my ‘relatives?’ What about them?”
There was some hesitation before Harold replied, his bright eyes dimming as they seemed to lose focus. Then he said, “Most likely they know. But Alfred most of all. He should know everything since the police took you to the hospital.”
“How was I when they found me?”
“Unconscious,” Harold whispered. “And half-alive.”
After that we were silent, but for some reason, I allowed him to walk with me, all the way back to Alfred’s cottage. Harold seemed willing to go, despite the atmosphere thickening around us, some sort of figurative mist accumulating in both our minds. Harold couldn’t know anything more than I did. I at least believed him, even if I still felt like I could never trust him with anything else. I took his hand gently, cautiously, finding it to be a stranger’s hand more so than a friend’s.
As we approached the valley where my house was, Harold silently turned to leave. It was clear that he was nervous about saying anything else, like he was worried that I’d become angry and verbally tear him apart. But as he walked away, I stopped him with one more question, one out of many.
“How many people know about this?”
Harold stopped and looked at me over his shoulder. He seemed reluctant to stay any longer. “Not very many, I think. A few police, the doctors…some boys…me and Alfred.”
“No one else?” I asked. Harold shook his head. “So they all hid it from me?”
“That, or they thought you already knew,” said the old man, and for the first time in a while, he smiled thinly, almost cynically. “You ever read Dickinson?”
“You may have read some to me,” I replied, confused by the change of subject in such a tense exchange.
Harold closed his eyes, inhaled, and recited from memory. A poet speaking the words of a poet. “How dreary to be somebody…how public like a frog…” He looked at me, smirking. “You remember that, before you do anything else.”
As he left me there, standing by the cottage, I had a vague idea of what he was trying to say. I knew Harold was trying to comfort me, to give Alfred some credit for hiding the truth from me for fear that I would be seen as a freak, as a strange entity in a small suburb. Either way, I didn’t know where I was from, or who I was; and as far I was concerned, nobody in Purley knew, either. And perhaps it would be a comfort to anyone else to have an identity, no matter whether or not it was real. But to me, keeping the name “Joan Engel,” if it wasn’t my name, meant it didn’t belong to me, and it never had.
I knew what I had to do either way, no matter how I approached it. I walked into my cottage quietly but attempted to put liveliness in my step. Alfred was on the couch, reading another of his old favorite books, the binding falling apart in his hands that were crinkled like paper. He heard me come in and raised his head to look at me. I tried to smile.
“Sorry about that. I just needed to clear my head,” I said. I walked toward him, most likely surprising him with my forwardness.
“Er…all right, then,” he said. “You feeling better?”
“Yeah,” I said, before a vague idea popped into my head. “You fancy maybe going on a drive through Reading?”
“A drive? “
“Yeah,” I said, grinning. “Like a little trip. Tomorrow, maybe. Change some things up.”
The look I received from Alfred was a puzzled one, but he did seem to consider it. Returning to his book, he flipped a page and said, “Well, I can’t see how it’ll hurt. What exactly did you want to do?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we can go to a museum, or the mediaeval borough. I’ve never been. Have you?”
“I suppose not.” To my relief and my satisfaction, I saw a smile dancing on Alfred’s lips as he set down his volume and heaved himself out of his chair. “Why not? It’ll be a day just for the two of us. It’ll help for you to get some more air.”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
I could feel the feigned cheerfulness in my voice, garishly noticeable in my ears. But it didn’t seem to faze Alfred at all. In truth, he seemed very happy, almost as if he were waiting for such an invitation. A bonding experience, he’d say, between grandfather and granddaughter. If only he knew my true intentions.
I stayed in my room for the rest of the day, thinking about how I’d carry out the plan formulating in my mind. I waited for Rupert or Bryce or anyone to tap at my window, demanding where I had been. But I think they all got the hint; the revelation they had given me would take time to digest, according to their logic. At the same time, I even practiced the great conversation, mouthing the words or whispering them as I looked into the mirror above my dresser. In my reflection, my hair stuck out as if it were attempting to give me a defiant air, an appropriate air. I felt my eyes watering from the very idea of this whole event unraveling. After all, I was scared. I was scared of a lot of things, but in the immediate moment, my plotting scared me most of all.
Because if I were to do this right, I could learn more about my true self than I ever thought I already knew. Tomorrow, I would confront Alfred, and I would force him to speak the truth. No matter what reasoning he had behind hiding it.
***
Alfred and I got into the car at nine o’clock the next morning. An hour before, we had had a quiet breakfast, but I could sense a sort of hyperactive energy from the old man as he ate his usual toast and mushrooms. I knew he was excited, in every sense of the word. He had even dressed for the occasion, donning a hat and a suit that he hadn’t worn in years. The dress shirt stretched over his belly and threatened to burst apart, sending buttons flying in every direction. The image would’ve made me laugh if my mind hadn’t been elsewhere, as I pulled on a sweater to combat the light drizzle that appropriately accompanied the morning.
The tires of the car squealed as they scraped their tracks onto the wet asphalt, leaving Purley behind as some of its inhabitants still slept in the Saturday fog. The weekend brought on a decent amount of traffic as the small suburb disappeared from sight in the rearview mirror, the wheels bouncing as Alfred and I wobbled in our seats. Alfred kept his hat in his lap, a small umbrella beside him in case we needed it. His chest rose and fell with the ragged breaths of an elderly man as his weathered hands gripped the steering wheel. How old was he now? Seventy-three? Five years had gone by in which I had lived with this man, a man who could turn out to be someone who I was never connected to.
We wove through the lines of cars like the street was a taut tapestry, the colors blurring in my vision as we picked up speed. The drizzle had turned into a light sprinkle, dotting the windows with speckled liquid crystal. The muffled sound of angry horns yelling as we passed by was faint in my mind. I looked at Alfred.
“So…” I started, and my breath caught in my throat. Alfred looked at me expectantly, his mustache bristling in the chilled air.
“What is it, Joan?”
I tried again. “I figured, now that we’re here, we could talk about a few things. One on one.”
Alfred stared. The intricate details of my plan were falling into place. I had wanted to catch him in as unfamiliar of a place as possible; our cottage in Purley would have been too much of a comfort. This was the logic I had gotten as a student, my whole experience shoving psychological tips into my brain. This was perfect…almost too perfect. I had him quiet, and right where I wanted him.
“Is there anything you’d like to tell me, Alfred?”
“I beg your pardon?”
His words were labored, separated with sharp breaths. I had startled him, just as I had done with Harold the day before. I repeated, “Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”
“You called me Alfred,” whispered my “grandfather.”
The tires screeched as we turned a corner. The rain was coming down faster and harder. I could see the windshield wipers slashing at the rivulets of water like blades.
“I did,” I muttered, and I could feel my heart rattling my ribcage like the bars of a prison cell. “Because I don’t know what else I should call you.”
“Well, call me Grandpa, Joan!” uttered Alfred, his eyes bulging. “You’ve always called me that. There’s no need to be formal.”
“I’m not trying to be formal.”
I felt the car jolt and bounce on the street. A brash honk from a full bus pierced my ears as it whipped past us. Alfred’s driving was becoming shakier; I was upsetting him.
“I’ve reason to believe,” I said, the dramatic words tasting odd in my mouth, “that you’ve been hiding some things from me. That you’ve maybe…done more than stretch the truth about how I got here, and how you know me.”
“What’re you talking about?” demanded Alfred, but I furiously shushed him.
“I ask the questions! You answer them! Understood?”
It was clear that my sharpness was disorienting the old man, who had to combat the downpour as well as the heightened pitches of my voice. He abruptly turned left. I clung to my seat but didn’t take my eyes off the man I was interrogating.
“Is this some kind of joke?” Alfred asked. I could see his face going white, even his large red nose losing color as he tried to pay attention to the road ahead of him. “Did you bring me out here to play a joke on me?”
“No,” I said, my teeth clenched.
“Then what is this?”
“If you let me ask the questions, you’ll find out! Why am I here? Why did you decide to follow me to the hospital?”
“What are you talking about? I told you, I recognized you when they pulled you from the car wreckage.”
“You’re a liar!” I snarled, and another horn shrieked at us as we spun into the adjacent lane.
“Joan, please!” hollered Alfred, his voice stifled by the din of the drumming rain. I extended my hand and felt my fingers grasp the collar of his jacket. I wanted to pull him toward me, to bring him closer so he could smell my breath on his face. I spoke softly but furiously, my words slightly muddled.
“Answer me this, Alfred. If not anything else, answer me this.” I could feel this one particular question shove all the others aside, taking the spotlight and listening to the whispers of an imaginary audience. Waiting, watching. “Am I really who you say I am?”
He blinked. All Alfred could do for me was blink. “What?”
“Am I…” I paused the words. “…really….” Hands pressed against the man’s shoulder, clinging to his coat sleeve. “…who you say I am?”
Alfred’s mouth opened. It was all I saw. I didn’t see the flash of streetlights, or hear the traffic thunderously protesting against us, the sharp jumps and tilts of the car as it whipped around wet streets like a roller coaster on slippery tracks. I could only see Alfred’s lips part, his tongue flutter in his mouth like a damp, loose leaf. I could only hear his choked voice, as the steering column pivoted in his hands.
“I…” He couldn’t say anything else, as the car spun out of control and collided into a truck pulling out of a nearby lane.
I ducked from flying glass and rain kicked up from under the tires, pressing myself against the door as the driver’s side folded in like cheap aluminium. The entire outside world was nothing but mist and water, white and gray as I covered my head, feeling the familiar scar by my ear. I heard the screeching of a bus’s tires; from my peripheral vision, I saw Alfred’s frozen expression as the frame of the car closed over him, the glass tearing his suit as the propulsion ripped his fingers from the steering wheel.
I know that I tried to scream; if I hadn’t been in a car accident before, I was in one now. But nothing came from my throat; no sound emerged. I could only open my mouth, let the air pass in and out of it. There was no breath to create a scream, only the harsh silence from my lips as I felt the right side of the car crumple against a lamppost, the rest of it swiveling out into the street like the needle of a compass. I heard the squealing of brakes from behind us, the smell of a dusty airbag bursting to life. I waited for the worst.
It didn’t come. Just as I had screamed a silent scream, the car had come to a silent rest, its body battered and broken. I smelled oil and smoke from the engine, water polluted with a rubbery stench as the rain continued to hammer down on the roof. I uncovered my head, shaking shards of glass from my tousled hair as I did so. But I remained huddled in my seat, pulling my face away from the deflating airbag that had attempted to envelope me and keep me alive.
I ran a hand across my collarbone and my fingers grew wet. A mix of water and blood was shimmering on my palm, like a crimson mirror that was almost capable of displaying my reflection. A large piece of glass must have hit me, for as I traced the origin of the blood, I could feel the gaping gash, an open crevasse in my flesh, practically cut down to the bone. But I couldn’t feel any pain, no stiffness in my neck where I had been injured. Instead I felt abstract things, like the time pass by in a frozen world, imaginary clocks ticking in my mind. I turned to the driver’s seat and retched.
Alfred sat contorted in the creases of the car’s frame, the metal outlining his twisted posture. I saw the dark red streaming from his head and neck, painting his face and mustache like a bizarre piece of art that the Museum of Reading would never have been able to offer. Then I threw up loudly on the plush carpeting of the car floor to the loud melody of the ambulances’ sirens.
***
There are three different kinds of people in the world: Those who find themselves straightaway, those who find themselves through experience, and those who never find themselves at all.
To them, seeking identity is a journey. To find oneself, according to philosophers and writers, is what the human experience is all about. Whether it’s described as a train ride, a walk down a forked road, or wandering in the brush of a forest shrouded in fog from the nearest hilltops.
But I can safely say that few of them, if any at all, needed to walk back up the road, or ride a train back to the first station. I can safely say that none of them had to start their journey over.
Perhaps it is foolish to rely on others to discover one’s identity. But the sad reality of the world is that it is the only way you can begin your discovery. It all starts with a background, a heritage, an ancestry. Your family is the one who helps you onto the train platform, handing you your luggage, before waving and dabbing at their eyes with handkerchiefs before your vision is blocked with the coal smoke of the train as you disappear down the rickety railroad tracks.
I didn’t have anyone to fall back on. I had to start with a blank easel, to paint the background as well as the person within it. I had to work harder than anyone else in the whole of England, perhaps in the entire world. But I wasn’t going to give up.
Even when I woke up in the hospital an hour after the accident in Reading had occurred, I was already determined to find answers.
***
“Well, Miss Engel, it looks like you avoided the worst of the crash. Consider yourself lucky.”
I stared into the doctor’s face, listening to the scratching of a pen as he scribbled notes onto a clipboard. The black stitches near my collarbone drew my flesh tight around my throat, creating an odd feeling like something was continually pulling on my skin. I lay on my back on the hospital bed, with familiar walls of white threatening to swallow me whole. I had immediately recognized where I was when I was carried from the ambulance; I was back in Royal Berkshire Hospital, but I couldn’t recognize any of the nurses or doctors who tended to me. There was no use interrogating them. They wouldn’t know anything about me.
The doctor in question had digested the false claims on my so-called identification card like a cheap lunch once I had regained consciousness. I could picture my information on the paper in front of him: JOAN ENGEL, AGE 15, BLOOD TYPE B+, LEGAL GUARDIAN: ALFRED ENGEL. The only thing I could trust from that data was the science in it, and the fact that I could only trust something as insignificant to me as my ruddy blood type baffled me.
Now, three days after the accident, I was still in the hospital, constantly being reminded that I was well enough to leave the next day if I so desired. When he finished writing, the doctor grinned at me. I read his nametag. “Doctor Keating?”
“What is it, Miss Engel?”
I struggled not to react to what he called me. My muscles felt tight in my chest and my arms as I sat up, the thick IV needle digging into my vein. “Do you know where Alfred is?”
Doctor Keating’s smile faded quickly, his brow creasing and wrinkling his large, dark forehead. “I’m afraid that your grandfather is in very critical condition. We have several people taking care of him, but he’s not doing the greatest, since he took most of the impact in the crash.”
“Can he still speak?”
“…Coherently, but painfully.” Doctor Keating set his clipboard down and went to switching the bag for the IV. He seemed to read my mind, though. “If you want to see him, you’re going to have to wait. Unless he shows some improvement, I think any visitors would upset him.”
I pressed him further. “Has anyone else come to see him?”
It was as if someone had overheard me because before Doctor Keating could answer, a young male nurse entered the room. From the looks of it, he was probably an intern; he seemed relatively fresh-faced as he approached, his cheeks flushed most likely from running about the halls on his mentors’ orders.
“Miss Engel’s relatives are here to see her, doctor,” he said curtly, his hands fiddling with his scrubs. He cast me a quick glance, as if the idea of seeing a patient stitched up nauseated him.
Doctor Keating looked at me, waiting for my approval. I swallowed sharply, fighting the growing lump in my throat. The idea of seeing my “relatives,” the people I had grown to love throughout the years, frightened me; already I could feel my insides twisting up, the things I wanted to say scratching at my vocal chords, demanding to be heard. I got déjà vu then, as I said nothing, but only slowly nodded to the doctor. Homage to my last experience here, I assumed. Keating in turn nodded to the intern, who went to open the door for a red-eyed Edna and a stone-faced Calvin.
At the sight of me in the hospital bed, Edna immediately burst into tears, making her eyes look like broken dams as she reached for a tissue. It couldn’t have been the first time she had cried that day, I thought, considering that her entire face was puffed out and red and raw from all the sobbing for her brother. I craned my neck to see one of my cousins, Tony, enter in a sports jacket and looking like he had run from his office in Newtown just to see his uncle and me. As a result, he looked worn out but surprisingly neutral about the whole thing, serving as the balance between his parents as Edna rushed to embrace me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the doctor and the nurse leaving the vicinity, though I wasn’t sure if it was due to respecting some family privacy or simply due to the fact that a sobbing elderly woman in a floral dress unnerved them.
“Oh, Joan, darling!” I heard her whimper into my ear as she kissed my forehead over and over again. As she pulled away, I could smell lipstick and hair dye, as well as wet mascara as she wiped away the black streaks from her wrinkled face with her tissue.
“Hello, Aunt Edna,” I said weakly.
“How fortunate for you to be all right! How I wish I could say the same for your grandfather. The doctors say he’s doing so poorly, and any visitors could disorient him!” Edna then turned to Calvin and Tony as if for approval. She received silent nods in reply.
“Did they tell you how he’s doing?” I asked. Edna broke down into dramatic sobs again, but Tony spoke for her.
“They say he’s got some broken bones,” he said. “Ribs and both legs, mostly. And that he’s lost a lot of blood.”
“It’s my fault this happened,” I mumbled, as I turned over on my side and faced the opposing wall.
And I considered myself to be partially right. In a way, it had been my fault, but I was curious to see how the three would react. I could only hear Calvin’s inhalations through his nostrils until Edna seized my arm and pulled me to her breast. Now the smell of cheap perfume was in my nose and I struggled not to cough.
“Oh, no, it’s not your fault, not at all,” she wept. “Your grandfather…well, since he’s gotten older, he’s been losing coordination, and Calvin can agree with me when I say he was never the best driver. Isn’t that right, Calvin, dear?”
“Sure,” my great-uncle mumbled, and I shook my head fervently at this, feeling the stitches strain against my neck.
“No, you don’t understand. I distracted him, and it was raining. That’s why he lost control of the wheel.”
There was a silence at my brief confession, and to my surprise, Calvin was the one who spoke, brushing past a still weepy Edna. From a distance, I could see his jaw set behind his white beard, his dark eyebrows furrowing.
“What were you doing before the car crashed?” he asked.
I suddenly shuddered; I felt intimidated by my great-uncle for the first time, like he was interrogating me. It was like I was staring into the face of the jowl-faced male investigator as he probed me for a name, any name. I swallowed what little saliva I had left on my tongue before speaking.
“I was just asking him about some things. Important things.”
“Like?” Calvin’s voice was deep and stern, but for a moment, I thought I heard a bit of shakiness in his timbre.
“You know, like…like if he was really my grandfather.” I tried to say it as casually as possible. It didn’t work.
“Oh, my goodness!” Edna gasped, as if she were horrified by such an assumption. She clutched her purse tightly and dabbed at her lips as Calvin nodded and turned to his son, who was now standing in the corner of the room.
“Tony, take your mother back to the waiting room. I’d like to talk with Joan.”
While Tony nodded, Edna stared at her husband with a gaping mouth. “Now, Calvin, I don’t think…”
“Alone,” emphasized Calvin, and he swept a pointing finger toward the door.
It was as though Tony were leading a whining dog out of the room by the way Edna sounded, as she muffled her moans with her now tattered mess of a tissue. Calvin closed the door behind them, the soft click of the steel knob being the only sound in the room besides the hum of the machines around my bed. Then he approached me, arms folded across the fabric of his buttoned tweed jacket, and he looked at me. I had never really taken a look at his eyes before and was amazed by how green they were, perusing my features before settling on my fingers, the scars contrasting against the white sheets.
Calvin broke his gaze temporarily to grab a chair and drag it to the side of the bed. He sat at my left, observing me, and I knew he was expecting me to say something. When I didn’t speak, he lifted a hand and, ignoring my wincing, ran his fingers across my temples where the large, unshapely scar was hidden underneath my hair.
“So the secret’s out,” he said coolly, yet his face read something similar to relief. “You finally confronted Alfred about why you’re here.”
I blinked. “Well, sort of.”
“But you know anyway, don’t you?” asked Calvin. “Even without him telling you outright. Don’t you?”
I didn’t reply for a moment, but despite that, I knew what he meant. And he was right. “So it’s true,” I managed to say. “Alfred’s not really my grandfather.”
The slow nod I received sent my heart scampering into my throat. It was a hesitant nod, but a resolved one.
“I didn’t want to say anything in front of your aunt and cousin,” Calvin continued, and I stared as he leaned back in his chair, the plastic backing crackling against his shoulders. “Edna is obviously very upset about her brother’s condition, and anything else would just break her.”
“So you knew?” I asked. My voice felt strangled in my throat, my tongue painfully dry. “You were part of this whole façade?”
“Of course I knew!” Calvin exclaimed suddenly. “All of Alfred’s relatives knew. We agreed to take on the role of your family for as long as he took care of you, until…”
“Until what?”
Calvin paused, sighing. “Well, until the police found any leads about where you came from. And why.”
His calmness in confessing all of this disturbed me. In fact, I sensed a sort of relief from him as he said it, like it was a burden he was lifting off his shoulders. I rose from my pillow, staring at my alleged great-uncle with my eyes stinging.
“But why didn’t you just tell me? Why didn’t Alfred just say what happened and that the police would take care of everything?”
“My brother-in-law was already pulling a lot of strings when he convinced the local authorities to let him obtain custody,” said Calvin. “I didn’t like it one bit. You think I didn’t want to tell you the truth? He decided everything before we even had a chance to protest. If we said a word out of line, he threatened to break ties with us. And I didn’t want to break up the family. My wife loves Alfred very much, and so do my kids.”
I let the information sink in before asking another question I believed was crucial. “So…is that why you didn’t speak to me much?”
I saw Calvin’s face sink in, a deep exhalation emitting from his lips like a defeated moan. For the first time that day, he seemed too guilty to look at me. “I never wanted to be distant from you, Joan,” he said. “I was just worried that I’d slip up and end up spilling the beans in front of everyone. Alfred had me on a very short leash. He knew that if anyone were going to say anything, I’d be the first to speak up. Besides…he tended to cast a pretty evil glare at me whenever I attempted to speak to you.”
“Did he?” I asked, slightly amused, and I began to remember the moments that I had passed off as nothing too serious. I just always thought that Alfred was a bit protective of me; he tended to glare at everyone who tried to affiliate with me. But at this point, it was starting to make sense.
Calvin grinned. “I’m surprised you didn’t notice before.”
“So now what?” I asked. “What do I do now? I know my name isn’t ‘Joan Engel.’ It never has been. So now what do I do?”
“What you mean? Joan Engel can be your name if you’d like it to be.”
“But I don’t want that name!” I cried in a sharp outburst. The veins in my neck pumped blood fiercely, firing up my mind as I became emotional. I began to gesticulate as I talked, to almost act out my situation to Calvin. “It’s not mine. It’s Alfred’s mother’s name, given to me by his imaginary son!”
“Now, Joan…” Calvin tried to say, but I wasn’t stopping while I was ahead.
“You have the comfort of knowing that your name was given to you and it belongs to you. I don’t! I know that my real family’s out there, most likely thinking I’m dead, and I don’t even know my real name!”
“Joan, I…”
“Who am I?” I suddenly asked, that broad, vague question penetrating my thoughts. “Do you have any idea who I could possibly be? Or what my real name is?”
It was at that moment that I received the answer that was unacceptable, intolerable, at least in my perspective. I remember every detail, every aspect of that moment. I know that the lights were bright, humming, as the IV slurped nutrients into my arteries. I felt the summer heat around me, combating the sparse air conditioning in the room. I remember every change of expression in Calvin’s face as the options for his response must have raced through his head: to comfort or not to comfort, to be blunt or not to be so. The answer was spoken in a low tone, a regretful tone, like a priest as he comforts a mourner at a funeral. The horrible, unspeakable truth.
“I don’t know, Joan. I don’t know.”
I collapsed back against my pillow, the bed frame rattling beneath my small figure. I breathed in and out, waiting for the typical tears of hopelessness and desperation that I had become so accustomed to in the past five years. Surprisingly, no tears came. I didn’t sob, or groan in anguish, or even whimper. I simply lay there, defeated, and sprawled in a tangled mess of white sheets. I listened to Calvin’s voice while it seemed to echo in the caverns of my mind.
“You realize, Joan, that I tried to convince myself that this was best for you,” he was saying. No, he was pleading to me. “You were so young back then. Imagine how you would have felt to hear that you were found in a coffin, of all places! I couldn’t believe it when I first heard it, and you know what? I didn’t want to believe it. I was fine with living a lie so long as you were happy, and that you had a childhood that was as normal as possible. I didn’t want you to be some spectacle that one would find in a museum.”
“Is that it?” I mumbled, my voice thin. “You wanted me to live a normal life?”
Calvin nodded. “The few who knew about your situation didn’t say a word. I know that they’re still working on your case, looking for anyone who could have lost a child or had a daughter allegedly pass away in the last few years. The police even updated Alfred every few months. They’ve found nothing, Joan. And I don’t think your knowing the truth could have helped you out much.”
“But you could have helped me search,” I protested.
“Oh, c’mon, Joan. Old people like me, being detectives?” Calvin laughed, and oddly enough, it seemed to lighten the tension. I actually felt a smile on my lips, even if it diminished quickly like a flame in a storm. “You have to admit, Joan, that this is the most we could do for you…let you live comfortably, with shelter and friends and people you loved. Isn’t that how you wanted to live, and not in some orphanage?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But not without knowing who I am.”
Calvin fell silent at this. It had been the most he had ever spoken to me, or really to anyone in most of his life. He had always been a quieter man, and I knew that this whole exchange had exhausted him. In fact, the whole experience had. As he stood up from the chair, he looked down upon me, that same muddled look on his face. It was like he didn’t know how exactly to feel, and he was not a man who was going to sugarcoat this. It was all an insane puzzle that no one knew how to put together – or more accurately, that no one could find the missing pieces for.
We both remained frozen for some time before the door swung open and Doctor Keating entered again. His brow was beaded with sweat, but he surprisingly wore a toothy grin as he walked into the room. His attention went to Calvin immediately.
“Good news. It looks like Mister Engel has positively responded to treatment, so you are free to see him in a few hours if the patient agrees to it.” The doctor then turned to me. “Miss Engel, I’ve arranged with your relatives to allow them temporary custody of you when your grandfather is still here. You’re free to go tomorrow morning.”
Thank God, I thought to myself as the doctor checked on the equipment leeching off of me and left the room. I had had enough time in a hospital to last me for years; it was almost becoming a second home. I propped myself on one elbow as Calvin turned to follow Doctor Keating, his hand reaching for the door as it swung closed.
“Uncle Calvin?”
He stiffened, most likely a reaction to the use of the word “uncle,” but I didn’t know what else to call him. He turned to me and let the door thud beside him, watching me lift the covers from my body. “What is it, Joan?”
“I want you to do me a favor,” I said, “when I leave the hospital tomorrow. You’ll be driving me to my place first, right? To get some things?”
Calvin nodded. I breathed deeply.
“Leave me there.”
“You can’t be serious,” Calvin suddenly snapped, as I swung my legs off the mattress and pulled myself out of bed. I had gotten tired of lying down and wanted to move as far as the IV would let me.
“Of course I’m serious. Do you really think I’m going to stay in Purley?” I asked.
“Well…yes! We all expect that.”
“Not on your life,” I said firmly, shaking my head. In the back of my mind, however, my conscience was screaming at me, begging me to come to my senses. But I kept going. “I don’t belong in Purley anymore. You have to understand. I need to find where I come from. I need to find my real home.”
“I won’t leave you there.”
“Fine,” I retorted. “I’ll just leave from your house instead. You can’t just chain me to my bed and expect me to stay.”
“But where on Earth do you think you’ll start?” demanded Calvin. “And with what on you?”
“I’ve got enough pocket money,” I countered, only furthering my logical side’s protests. “It’s enough to buy a few train tickets, to go traveling a bit.”
“How do you expect to find your family when you have no idea where you come from?” barked Calvin. “Joan, look at you. You’re fifteen years old and not even five feet tall. You can’t possibly get a job or find a place to stay while you’re looking for answers. Why, you could get yourself in serious danger. Think rationally.”
But I couldn’t think rationally. I wouldn’t let myself do so. Any journey to find one’s self had never been observed as rational, not by anyone in his or her right mind. Already the consequences were jumping around in my head, and I shut them down and focused on my planned journey, or rather, my quest.
I walked toward Calvin, stopping halfway across the room, and took his hand. His fingers felt cool on my sweaty palm, the skin pulled tight across his knuckles and exposing long blue veins interlacing each other like spider webs. I could tell that he couldn’t believe my determination, and in truth, I didn’t believe it, either. But what else could I do? How could I return to Purley-on-Thames without all those damn questions tormenting me?
“You’ll do this for me, won’t you, Uncle Calvin? Please.” I squeezed his hand, feeling the blood in our fingers pump simultaneously between each other. “I’d think you’d be the only one of the Engels to really understand.”
And I was right. Alfred and Edna had been completely and totally average people. So had I, as best as I could be, anyway, until this moment. I knew that the man before me had created his own adventures. According to Edna’s stories during our many suppers together, Calvin had been a pilot, and a good one, before settling down after his vision began to go bad. He had known the consequences of traveling, especially alone. A war veteran, an explorer – he had witnessed the things that his wife and brother-in-law didn’t seem to care about. He had discovered who he truly was and what he loved, something I wanted to do more than anything in the world now, even if it meant running out of Royal Berkshire in hospital garb.
Calvin’s grip tightened on my hand for a moment, then slackened. It did not seem to be a defeated gesture; in fact, it seemed to be a resolved one, a compliant one. He looked at me calmly, almost casually. I could see the faint outlines of a smile.
Not moving, the man who had been my great-uncle for five years said, “If you need any help out there, call me. You have our phone number.”
Before he could say anything else, I had thrown my arms around his neck, pulling him into a powerful embrace and planting a kiss on his cheek. He responded awkwardly at first before returning the hug, burying his face into my hair. It was the first time I had ever embraced Calvin, and oddly enough, I hoped that it wouldn’t be the last. I knew, as I breathed in the dusty smell of his jacket and the subtle lotion on his face, that he would be the only man I could truly regard as a family member, even if he was not related to me. He would always be my great-uncle, a friend I could count on. He had wanted to be there for me since the beginning, and even with some reluctance, he wanted to support me now.
“Thank you,” I managed to say before I felt my face dampen. This time, however, the tears were not coming from me.
I do not remember how long we held each other in that silence. Only the beep of the heart rate monitor was our clock, ticking away the time we spent in that hospital room together, surrounded by walls of pearly white.
***
Calvin drove me back home the night I was released from the hospital. Edna insisted that she stay by Alfred’s side, though unbeknownst to her, I would not be seeing him myself. It took all of my will power to simply follow Calvin to his car, as the doorway to Alfred’s hospital room faded from my view. I would never see or speak to Alfred again; I no longer had any wish to demand the truth from him, not even in the days before he died nine years later. I had simply no motive to confront him anymore.
I didn’t know why it was so hard for me to forgive him, back then and for several years after. After all, he hadn’t married or had children, and having me in his life probably made the last five years the happiest. But for some reason, the idea of his simply marching in and making up stories to get me to be his granddaughter pained and confused me. It was a bothersome sore in my mind, constantly warding away the idea of contacting him ever again. I remember crying when I learned that he died, though, and my husband taking me in his arms and comforting me as we sat on the living room couch while I clutched the phone. But fourteen years earlier, there I was, leaving him for good, with every bit of hesitation disappearing.
Calvin convinced me to stay in West Reading for a while, and he treated me to dinner in a local pub, similar to what Alfred had consistently done with me in Purley. I didn’t really eat, but I appreciated the companionship while Calvin dabbed at the remaining sauce on his empty plate with chips and refused the consistent offer of Guinness. He drove better than Alfred ever did, the road feeling smooth beneath us as we silently moved through the rush hour traffic back to the outskirts of Reading’s urban area.
It was dusk when we passed the Thames, and for some reason, I felt an urge to return to it. Hearing how much of a role it had had on my past and my current situation had been discomforting, and I figured that after all this, I’d never want to go near the river or any body of water again, for that matter. Still, I couldn’t help watching the water moving as the sun dipped below the valley, leaving the muddy surface of the river dim and somber. I suddenly wondered if I should teach myself how to swim.
Calvin stopped by my cottage, and as I opened the door, I felt my great-uncle take my hand and place a wad of something into it. I extended my fingers to find about ten twenty-pound notes, all crisply folded and held together with a rubber band, stretched across my palm. I shook my head at the offering, peered up at Calvin’s watering eyes.
“No,” I whispered. “I can’t.”
“Take it,” he said. “You’ll need it.” And he took me in his arms and kissed me on the forehead.
I pulled myself out of the car, straightening the sleeve of my sweater and carefully pushing the money into my pocket. As Calvin drove off, I couldn’t help watching him go, the worn out blue paint on his car meshing with the night skies that seemed to move like dark velvet. I breathed in the dust the tires kicked up, the smell of the engine as it spluttered in the calm atmosphere of the suburb. I let myself stand there, quietly, contemplatively, before turning toward the cottage, its usual lit up windows dark and empty. Staring at it without the comfort of calling it my home made me feel, for the first time in a while, very lonely.
Still, I forced myself to walk to the house, to unlock the door with the spare key Calvin had given me. I forced myself to move about the rooms for the last time, ignoring the stacks of old books that Alfred had read, the dishes he had set out in the kitchen to wash, the walls that had supported me when I woke from my nightmares. I forced myself to go into my room, to approach my closet and start pulling out my best clothes and throw them into a pile. I forced myself to get my things from the bathroom and my sturdiest shoes from under my dresser. I threw it all in a small bag I found in Alfred’s room, after I had dumped all the fishing hooks, lures, and tins of bait onto the faded rug.
I packed little, as I figured it would be best to travel light. All at once, my mind began to race, and I began to feel the color rushing from my cheeks. It was easy for me to prepare to leave, to go on a journey to find what I had lost. But what wasn’t easy was where to start. As soon as I zipped up the bag, I collapsed onto my bed and breathed deeply, in and out. Time must have passed by quickly as I sat, the night hours approaching with heavy footsteps, but I had to think. I had to actually plan something, or else I’d find myself wandering.
I stood up and went back to Alfred’s room. A bus schedule lay folded on his nightstand, and I picked it up and opened it. Alfred had always gotten the latest bus schedules when he went out but had never bothered to take the buses at all; still, his habit would prove a convenience for me. The last bus to West Reading would be at eight o’clock in the evening; otherwise, I would have to wait until morning. And despite my hesitation to outline everything, I was not becoming any more patient.
Folding up the schedule, I stuck it in into my pocket, while at the same time moving to grab an old wallet from the top drawer in Alfred’s dresser. He had always kept his old things, and now I knew I could utilize one of them after rummaging through the dresser for fun when I was a child. I put my hidden savings, as well as Calvin’s money, into the wallet before stuffing it into my jeans, ignoring the large bulge it created on my thigh. I checked the time. Seven twenty-three. My mouth went dry.
I stood there for a moment, frozen in my preparations. My packed bag lay by my feet, my sweater clinging to my perspiring back and still quite flat chest. I tried to imagine what I looked like, a wild looking girl with stitches in her neck who could pass off as a hobo. I breathed deeply again, inhaling and exhaling. Time to go, at long last. I couldn’t hesitate any longer.
Swinging my bag over my shoulder, I marched to the door and flung it open, just in time to collide with Rupert. Even in the night, I knew it was him; the lights I had turned on in the cottage had given away my return. Obviously he had been worried about me, especially when I was in the hospital again. I imagined him standing by the darkened house each night, waiting for me to come home. I suddenly felt a warmth in my chest just thinking about it.
As my vision re-focused from literally running into Rupert, I was amazed to see how disheveled and exhausted he looked. He seemed to have grown three years older in the time span of two weeks, his chin dotted with stubble and his eyes sunken in. He looked me up and down tirelessly, eyeing my bag and my clothes, my frizzy hair and then the black embroidery on my collarbone. He opened his mouth to speak, stuttered, and tried again.
“Joan, I…”
It was as if I had become a victim of animalistic instinct, or perhaps it was the moment serving as such dramatic fodder – for as Rupert spoke, I dropped my bag, rose to the tip of my toes, and kissed him long on the lips. As I pulled away, I could hear his gasp for breath, then my own puffing for air, as I silently threw my arms around him, holding him tightly, not being able to speak. I felt his hands, callused from tree climbing and playing cricket and swimming, rest against the small of my back, his whiskered cheek against mine.
I pulled away from him slowly, reluctantly. He seemed disappointed as I did so, before I placed a hand on his jaw. I did not feel romance brew up in me; I did not hear my conscience clamoring for him to come with me, to be my companion as I searched for who I really was. I was not in love with Rupert – but I did love him. I moved to pick up my bag and threw it back across my shoulder.
“I’ll write to you,” I whispered, before Rupert could speak.
“Joan,” Rupert began, but I was already walking away, heading in the direction of the nearest bus stop. I turned back to look at him, and he hadn’t moved.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for helping me.”
And I turned around again and didn’t look back. I knew he stood there the whole time watching me go, until I faded into the darkening August night. I knew his mind must have been racing, feeling the kiss still warm on his lips. I knew he wanted to say something, anything to me, but he didn’t have to. He knew I had to do this alone. He had his identity and a future to look forward to because of his identity. And he knew that the truth he had given me would not fade away in the back of my mind, but rather had shaped me into a person who was different than the childhood friend he had always known.
I never forgot Rupert throughout the years. I still e-mail him, and we’ve been able to see each other again occasionally. But at that point, he was part of my past because that night, I left Purley-on-Thames. I left Leighton Park School. I left Bryce, Luke, Ivan, and all the rest of the boys. I left Harold, who was probably sleeping in his chair with a half-finished draft of his poetry lying on his desk. I left my relatives, wondering how Edna would react to such an audacious act by her husband. I left Alfred, still lying on that hospital bed, probably wondering if I was okay. But most important, I left Joan Engel behind, the name only a memory to me. I left it all for good.
And I never went back.
The work you see here has not been edited nor altered since October 7th, 2011.
Comments
Post a Comment