Twist (3 page)

“That’s impossible. You’re kidding me. Right?”

“Nope. I’m not. It really was weird. One day I wrote right-handed, the next day I wrote left. I never told anyone that but you Beth. But it’s the God’s truth. That was really weird.”

“I bet. You know what, I think Billy was left-handed too.”

“You’re right he was. I remember Jimmy used to tease him about being stupid because of it.”

“You were saying that you got into adventure. How so?”

“Well, I began taking up sports just for the sheer excitement of them. Like water skiing and snow skiing. Not cross-country, but the fast windy downhill type. Always, I searched for windier, steeper courses. Hell, I had hated sports in grammar school, but as I grew older I became addicted to that adrenaline rush. Anything. Once a sport lost its excitement I stopped doing it. Flying and hang gliding became boring after awhile. Too easy, not enough chance of failure.”

“Failure? You wanted to fail at flying?” Beth asked astonished. “You mean you wanted to die?”

“No. And no I didn’t have suicidal thoughts because of what happened to Billy. It was more like other sports held more chance of getting that high. Flying and hang gliding were too easy. With a mountain, or water beneath me I couldn’t always tell where the next tree or wave would be. So I became adventure addicted—I even tried bungee jumping when it first came out if that tells you anything.”

“It tells me you’re crazy,” Beth laughed.

“Maybe I am. It is almost like my drug of choice you know. I have friends who do cocaine, I have friends who drink heavily, and I have friends who pick up new sex partners nightly. That’s their thing. I don’t do any of that, but I do go wild for on-the-edge experiences. One time I even tried walking on a tight rope, just for fun.”

“That’s fun?”

“For me it was. I almost made it too, but slipped.”

“There was a net, right?”

“Nope. That was part of the thrill. No net. But I was lucky, I caught the rope.”

“You
were
lucky.”

“Yeah, it’s almost as if I couldn’t die. Especially considering all the amazing things I’ve tried. Like I was not fated to die just yet. So that’s part of what has changed.”

“Only part?” Beth asked.

“Well, a few other things happened.”

“Like what?”

“I was deathly allergic to penicillin as a kid. After a night of studying like crazy, I took this exam in college. Well I finished it, but I passed out. Pneumonia, they told me later. The doctors didn’t have a medical history on me and injected me with penicillin. Instead of a terrible reaction, it actually saved my life. It could have been a fluke or something I guess.”

“That’s true. Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes.”

“Yes. My interests changed in high school.”

“You told me, you became interested in sports.”

“That and I began to hate English, which I had always wanted to go into. For all my childhood I remember wanting to be a college professor.”

“A noble cause.”

“Yes I know it is. And you’re great at it.”

“Thanks.”

“But in college I turned to business. Something I had never been interested in before. I even took classes in Accounting.”

“So? Kids change.”

“They do. But I had always hated math before, even stunk at it. Yet I found that I got better and better at it. And science too. I had liked English and history as a kid, but as I got older I became more proficient at science and math. Weird, huh?”

“Kind of. Most kids who like the humanities don’t do well in the sciences, and vice versa. At least from my experience. Not that you couldn’t have liked both. But you said you did better than you expected.”

“I did. I got better in science and worse in history. Of course, who really cares about the Renaissance?” Kevin teased, knowing she taught history.

“That is strange. But not from a guy who turned lef-handed,” Beth teased back.

“I guess I deserved that bit of ribbing. One other thing has changed since Billy died.”

Some kids screamed in the background. Beth said, “Hold on Kevin.” Then she moved the phone from her mouth, but Kevin heard her talking to her kids anyhow. The words were muffled but discernible, “Go play outside kids. I’m trying to have a conversation on the phone now. Your father said to come inside it was going to rain? Okay, stay in, but go up to your room and play there.” There was a rustling sound, “Sorry Kevin.”

“No problem. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No. I’ve got a while before dinner. Go on. You were saying there was one other change since Billy. What was it?”

“I met a girl. I mean a woman.”

“Oh, that’s great. What’s her name?”

“It’s Rose.”

“How’d you meet?”

“That’s the odd part. We met in a country and western bar. I’d always hated country music as a kid, until well, until I was about eleven years old. A friend of mine, actually just an acquaintance named Jack, suggested we meet there. While I loved the music, I usually avoided going to these bars because most of them were dives. Yet, for some reason I agreed to meet him there.”

“You must have been bored that night.”

“Probably,” Kevin said. But that wasn’t it. Dives stank of stale beer and played music that was too tinny. That night was no different. But he was different. He found himself toe tapping and singing songs.

Rose came up to him and said, “Hi cutie.” She was too bold for him. He saw instantly that they had nothing in common. She dressed in skintight pants, and wore an open shirt revealing hefty cleavage. But from the moment she approached, he couldn’t stop staring at her. Her raw sexuality hooked him, he told himself. But there was more. Much more.

The spaghetti straps over her naked shoulders made him tremble with desire, something he had never done before. And she wasn’t the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. In fact, Sarah Thomas had been more so, and he had dumped her after two dates. Still Rose attracted him like no other, she had an ease about her. The feelings of knowing her from before, some other time, a time that never existed, struck him. He had never believed in love at first sight, but she had changed all that.

Rose was crude, saying “Let’s get out of this dump,” after only saying hello. He normally would have refused, liking to get to know the women he slept with beforehand. This time, he had gone with Rose. Some feeling of rightness had pervaded everything, so he had done it. That in itself was unlike him, taking a chance like that.

“Hello?”

“Oops sorry. I guess I was just remembering how we met.”

“You old romantic.”

“Well, we’re planning on getting married next month. Valentine’s Day. Hope you and Dave can make it. That’s why I called in fact. And of course to catch up.”

“We’ll try. Make sure to send an invite though.”

“We will.”

* * *

Life went on. Rose and Kevin conceived a son, William. They started him in high school the same year that Rose found the nodule on her breast. It was the couple’s thirteenth anniversary.

Rose, the woman Kevin loved with his entire soul, died two short years after chemotherapy started. They cremated her.

With Rose’s parents unreachable in Europe for another week, Kevin postponed her funeral until they returned. That entire week his eyes remained fused with tears. Every morning he almost had to pry the eyelids from his face to open them.

The last hauntingly familiar thing he found out about Rose’s family was they had lived in the same small neighborhood he had for a time. The one where Beth now resided. His family had already moved when Rose’s landed. Eventually she moved away from them. Yet she had such fond memories she insisted upon having her ashes interred there.

The funeral took Kevin back there. To where Rose’s family resided now. To where he had lived so many years ago.

Deja vu kept occurring while driving into the area. He knew what was around almost every corner, remembered things he hadn’t remembered in years, and got confused when some major aspect had changed. Many had. His old house no longer stood on Pine Street. Instead, a three-story townhouse of red brick occupied the land. Many stores had come and gone in the years since his last visit.

His old friend Jimmy Summers still lived there. Beth had told him that some time before. Jimmy attended Rose’s funeral as a sign of respect for Kevin. That was what he believed at least.

The day after the funeral, Kevin dropped off William at Beth’s house. For some reason, one he did not understand, he needed to be alone. When he finally decided to revisit the graveyard he made a crazy wrong turn, getting himself completely lost. Lost in a town he had once known from alleyway to alleyway. He recognized something finally. Something from the past. Like he was a child again, running home with his friends, Johnny, Tony, Jimmy and Billy. Playing games and stupid pranks.

Memories flooded his mind as he drove—he came to an intersection that was totally familiar, yet somehow alien. The ghastly looking railroad crossing hadn’t been there before, his child brain was sure. It hadn’t existed in the past. The cavernous train tunnel resembled the giant mouth of a stone man—open and ready to eat him alive. As the bar descended, bells started ringing—warning him of an impending train—connecting his past with his present. Kevin daydreamed back. Back to that fateful day when his life had been changed. When Billy’s life had ended. Submerged in his brain, Kevin understood.

“You killed Billy, Kevin. Do you know that?” A voice inside his head asked. The voice of time, indescribably old, was correct of course.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Kevin said.

This location, where two boys’ lives went askew, his and Billy’s, seemed to radiate a heat. He envisioned the accident—Billy working hard to remove the train tie, using all his might—then the train, loud and angry. His mind swirled with thoughts—Kevin understood what had happened. This was his destiny—as it should have been all those years before.

This place held the cards to so many lives.

The voice spoke again, “It was not your fault. Yet the choice you made, your offer to take Billy’s place, changed what finally happened. Do you understand that?”

“I guess I do. But I was just trying to protect Billy. Really.” The roar of the train in the tunnel reminded Kevin of that previous day—but there was no escape today—it sounded like a snoring giant awakening, his starving stomach screaming for food…almost as if the giant would gobble Kevin up alive. Closer—hungrier—closer—angrier—the train rumbling its approach.

“I guess I screwed everything up. Didn’t I?” Kevin knew what his whole life had been—he had lived out Billy’s dreams, his hopes…his fate. His life. Experiencing Billy’s needs, loving Billy’s wife. Things Billy would have done had he not died. Rose was Billy’s woman all along.

“I think you understand what happened. You lived for Billy, but you must die when he was to die. Do you understand that as well?”

“Why?”

“Fate is mutable, but some things must occur.”

The words seeped into Kevin’s mind. And he thought he understood. Billy would have died. Today.