Worlds Apart (3 page)
Time passed.
Actual time, true time.
And as it did, the private world in which Lonnie and Laurie could wander didn’t appear so often. They didn’t mind. It was wonderful when it happened, of course, but the novelty certainly wasn’t there anymore. Instead of being an adventure, their forays into a realm of their own became more of a brief vacation, a refreshing of their souls, gently worn by work and duty and life.
Belinda turned twelve, then thirteen, then fourteen. Marriage for Lonnie and Laurie occurred exactly a week before Belinda’s thirteenth birthday, two years to the day after they met at the circus.
Married Life, Year One: moving in together, much discussion as to whether to have children immediately or later, continuous improvement for both in the culinary department.
Year Two, First Child: diapers, lack of sleep, much discussion as to whether they should have waited to get pregnant, lack of sleep and more diapers.
Married Life, Year Three: a move to a larger house, the shifting of nearly all cooking to Lonnie, discussion as to whether to have a second child or not.
Year Four, Second Child: a repeat of year two.
The first time the clocks stopped after Laurie gave birth was an uncomfortable moment for both. Holding each other in the bedroom, the baby being asleep, Lonnie thought it was getting
too
quiet. He got up to look at the clock, and sure enough, for the first time in several months, it had stopped.
“Oh my God, the baby!”
Laurie cried, running to the bassinet. “He’s gone! He’s not here!”
Lonnie tried to calm her, but she was exhausted and frightened and distraught.
“What if we never come back? What if
he
never comes back?” she screamed, running from room to room as if their son, at three months old, had decided to start playing hide and seek.
“He’ll be back. He’s fine. Why don’t we just lie here?” Lonnie said mildly. He was worried as well, for it had never occurred to them to wonder where the other people disappeared to when they disappeared. “Let’s go to sleep, and when we wake up, he’ll be back.”
Their son just didn’t fall into the category of
other people
, though, and Lonnie could feel a tightening in his throat as he thought about their child, such an accepted presence for both of them now, being gone from the home and from their lives.
“Something
awful’s
going to happen to him!” Laurie screamed. “What if he can’t breathe? He’s going to get hungry!”
It took what felt like hours, but finally, finally, Lonnie soothed both Laurie and himself with soft words and caresses. Quietly sobbing, they eventually drifted into an uneasy sleep that terminated with the explosive cries of a miserable baby. Miserable not because of anything worse than a soiled diaper, but the grateful looks on the awakened parents’ faces!
Some months after that, when it happened again, Lonnie persuaded Laurie to take a walk. And once her initial qualms had passed, they strolled for miles, viewing the lanes and trees and houses as though for the first time, their lives having become so centered around the baby that all else seemed foreign and unreal.
Both Lonnie and Laurie were happy with each other, with their child that would soon become children, with
who
they were and where they were. Lonnie would think sometimes about how just a few years earlier, he had found life and all its repetitive machinations ludicrous, practically meaningless. Sitting in traffic on the way to work, surrounded by the same cars that surrounded him every weekday as they plied the same journey into downtown, he saw everything he did as part of one huge circle of uselessness. Wake up, shower, eat, drive, work, eat, work, drive, eat, sleep,
wake
up.
The identical things day after day, with the occasional ball game or movie or holiday or traveling circus being the only variations on that stultifying pattern of sameness.
Laurie had altered those assessments of his. Laurie had brought meaning to Lonnie’s existence. The life they led together was truly a world apart, whether that world was the mysterious isolation they experienced as a couple, or whether it was the one in which they dwelled amidst the hundreds or thousands or even millions of other people.
For Laurie, the day she met Lonnie at the circus was the beginning of her life. She had fond memories of many things from before, but none were as rich, or vibrant, or as
real
as those she shared with this man who adored her. Who loved every inch of her, inside and out, flaws and warts and scars along with all the good
parts.
She
knew
he would do nothing to hurt her, she had understood this even before he hadn’t bought her a popcorn that day, buying instead the one for Belinda and the one for himself that he had said she could
mooch
from!
A gentle man.
And he had been Laurie’s safe harbor from that day forward.
And with luck, forever.
As the years slipped by, the secret that Lonnie hadn’t shared with Belinda didn’t occur that often. When their children were younger, this was a relief to Lonnie and Laurie, for the worry that is an inherent part of every parent’s life could never entirely be quelled while they were alone. And as more time passed, and it happened with less and less frequency, they almost didn’t notice, so engaged were they with living.
“Do you think we could ever make it happen again?” Laurie whispered late one night when it had been so long that neither of them could recall the date of the last occurrence. But Lonnie didn’t answer.
For it didn’t really matter. It was just what used to happen. And what might happen again
some day
.
They had each other either way.
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Part One: They Meet
“One of yours?” said the angel called Lloyd.
“Yup.
Name’s
Jillsy
. She’s a peach,” said the angel called Farber.
“Huh! That she is!” said Lloyd. “Wish she were one of mine.”
Farber looked about, and quickly spotted a gentleman of twenty-eight or so, finishing up a call at a bank of public telephones. He was talking rapidly, while at the same time his fingers were probing the adjacent telephones’ coin return slots.
“He
gotta
name?” said Farber. There was no question as to whether or not this fine representation of humankind was one of Lloyd’s; that much was clear.
“
Ungh
.
Wilford
.
Wilford
Middlewick
,” said Lloyd. “He’s a challenge. A challenge for sure.”
Both Lloyd and Farber were silent as
Wilford
Middlewick
concluded his conversation with a boisterous “
Seeya
, then!
”,
hung up the receiver with a chunk, and then went fishing in the two coin return slots that had so recently been just beyond his reach.
“You’d think he’d get himself one of them cell phones,” said the angel called Lloyd morosely. “He’s just cheap.
Nothin
’ I can do about it, neither. Cheap is cheap. No way to influence
that!
”
One short block away from where
Wilford
Middlewick
was quitting his quest for coinage, the woman named
Jillsy
turned a corner and headed briskly along the sidewalk, straight toward
Wilford
.
Jillsy
was not exactly one of God’s most handsome creations, but nonetheless she was pleasant enough to look at, and she carried herself with an air of competence and sincerity that far outweighed any deficiencies she might have possessed in the beauty department.
“Can you even imagine how much Mr.
Middlewick
got teased about that name when he was a kid?” said the angel called Lloyd.
“Hey!”
Jillsy
called as she and
Wilford
were about to pass one another.
Wilford’s
head jerked; he’d been thinking about what to catch on the tube tonight, since everyone he’d called had professed business, or illness, or just plain tiredness as an excuse for not seeing him tonight. Not a one of them had pleaded disinterestedness, which
Wilford
suspected was the
primary
reason for the succession of NOs to his query about “maybe
hangin
’ out or something, hey?”
“What are you doing in this part of town?”
Jillsy
asked, a challenge that
Wilford
Middlewick
found confusing, since this woman hovering before him did indeed look familiar, but was hardly someone he could place.
“Uh, I’m… I, uh, work near here,”
Wilford
managed.
“Oh! So do
I
!”
Jillsy
replied. “Two blocks down Fifteenth, in the Sutter building. Fancy that, both of us working in such close proximity, and being neighbors, too! You’d think we’d have run into each other down here before now!”
“Oh, uh, yeah.
You’d think,”
Wilford
said cautiously. “I was just,
er
, leaving work, about to go home. I was maybe going to do something with some friends tonight, but none of them can make it now, it seems.”
Jillsy’s
face brightened, although whether from relief that
Wilford
could actually put a sentence together or from a heightened interest due to his professed freedom was anybody’s guess.
“By the way, I don’t believe we’ve officially met,”
Jillsy
stated, and she stuck a firm,
ringless
paw directly before
Wilford
. “I’m
Jillsy
Cavanaugh!”
“Oh, ho!” said the angel called Lloyd. “She may be a peach, but that’s a mouthful!”
“Yup,” said the angel called Farber as
Wilford
Middlewick
grasped
Jillsy’s
extended hand and irresolutely intoned the syllables of his own name. “And her middle name, if you really want to stir up some consonants, is ‘Wainwright’.”
“
Ungh
.
Mother’s maiden?” said Lloyd.
“Nope.
Father’s mother’s maiden,” said Farber.
“Syllable soup everywhere today, I guess,” said Lloyd.
“So…” hazarded
Wilford
Middlewick
, and then his lips
plupped
shut as he realized that he had nothing more to add.
“Would you like to walk with me?”
Jillsy
spoke with the bright certainty that her request was far too logical to be refused. “I’m just going to pick up a clock, an antique clock, at
Havershim’s
, right down there. We could take the Metro back together!”
Wilford
glanced in the direction
Jillsy’s
hand had indicated, and he spotted a dark blue awning emblazoned with
Havershim’s
Clock Shop
in silver italics.
“Uh, yeah.
Love to! Cool!” His gaze shifted back to
Jillsy’s
face, and he threw in “Sure ’
nuff
!” just for good measure.
“Okay, then!”
Jillsy
beamed. “Let’s go!”
Wilford
Middlewick
pivoted slowly to join her; he was almost afraid that she would take his arm and march-step him not only to the clock shop and then the Metro, but all the way to his apartment door as well!
“It’s a Chelsea,”
Jillsy
said to
Wilford’s
utter bafflement. “Early
1900’s,
made in Boston. It was my grandfather’s, but
his
father’s before that. It’s needed an overhaul for ages, but I finally got around to bringing it in three weeks ago.”
Comprehending suddenly that she was referring to the clock,
Wilford
nodded encouragingly; he was with the program here!
“It’s heavy,”
Jillsy
continued. “It will be nice to have someone with me.
“Oh, no, no!” she interjected into her own word stream, realizing that
Wilford
might falter if he thought she’d picked him up solely to be a beast of burden, “I’ll carry it myself! But with you walking beside me, it’ll be much less likely that someone will bump into me, or try to take the clock right out of my hands!”
“Ah,”
Wilford
Middlewick
said.
“See what I mean?” said the angel called Lloyd. “He’s even cheap with his gab! What was that, one word to her two hundred? What can I do with that? I can’t be a ventriloquist, can I?”
“Nope,” said the angel called Farber.
“So many times this guy has done this! So many times!” said Lloyd. “It’s like he doesn’t
want
good things or good people to be a part of his life! He chases them away, or just bores them into abeyance. Oh, ho! Look at that!”
Wilford
Middlewick
had surprised even himself with his simple, gallant gesture: he had leaped forward to pull open the door of
Havershim’s
Clock Shop for
Jillsy
. She flashed him a warm smile, passed inside, and yet still he stood, holding the door as
Jillsy
strode to the counter. Finally, as her hand dove into her purse and then emerged with a yellow receipt stub,
Wilford
let go and stepped inside the shop as well. The door whooshed shut behind him.
“Well, I’ll be,” said Lloyd. “He hasn’t done anything like
that
before.”
“She smiled at him. He liked it,” said Farber. “He’ll do it again now, and not just for
Jillsy
. He tried something new, and got a good reaction.”
“Huh!” said Lloyd. “I wish he’d try something new more often! It’d make my job that much easier, not to mention more interesting!”
“Sometimes,” said Farber, “we have to make things easier by doing it ourselves. We have to help things along, perhaps allow a direction to be chosen that hadn’t been considered as an option before.”
“But doesn’t that border on interference?” asked Lloyd. “Doesn’t that overstep our bounds?”
“Yes and no,” said Farber. “As long as the ‘interference’ is accomplished via minor manipulations, it doesn’t truly overstep the bounds. It is perfectly acceptable, say, to
arrange
a situation to allow things to occur by themselves. If, perhaps, a touch differently from what might have played out without our, well, gentle influence.”
