Bathing the Lion (23 page)

“Let me do it for you.” Jane took the bag, pulled out the muffin, and handed it over.

“Thanks. I’m ready now, tell me about flips.”

“Okay. But first you
know
we’re back in our dream from last night now, right? The one we all shared? In it, you and I met here at the mall and you told me Dean wanted to separate.”

Vanessa nodded and took a giant bite of muffin.

“Simply put, a flip is when you’re sent back to moments or periods in your life you’ve already lived. But this time you experience them with all the knowledge you have now. So when you go back to that specific experience this time, you already know what will happen next. It’s like an instant replay in sports but
with
the added knowledge of how the game turns out.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do we have them? What’s the point of these flips?”

Jane was surprised Vanessa hadn’t first asked who or what caused them.

“To help you see your life more clearly in retrospect. All memory lies, Vanessa. It paints nice colors over the ugly or disturbing things. Or it cleverly distorts them, bends and twists them, so they fit better into the convenient history we’re all continuously writing and amending of our lives. That fact applies to every conscious being in the cosmos: no matter what you are, your memory is always and for
everything
an unreliable witness. Never trust it to tell you the truth about who you are or how you got here.”

“How do you know all this, Jane?”

“I’ll explain in a minute; one thing at a time.” Jane took the coffee out of Vanessa’s hand, had a sip, and gave it back.

“So why are we back
here
in the mall? Is it important? Should we be looking for something?”

Jane shook her head. “I don’t know yet.”

“Who put us here?”

“I think I did.”

Vanessa didn’t seem surprised by any of this. She took another bite of muffin and sipped coffee, all the time watching Jane. “It kind of reminds me of the movie where the guy keeps re-living the same day again and again.”

“
Groundhog Day
?”

“Yes.”

“Vanessa, this is different. Because once a flip takes place, your life is never sequential again. One day you’re forty and the next thing you know, you might be fifteen again. There’s never any way of knowing what will be next.”

“You mean from now until I
die
I’m going to move back and forth between the different years I’ve already lived?”

Jane kept her facial expression neutral. “Yes, I believe that’s what will happen.”

Vanessa’s voice rose. “I’ll
never
go back to living a normal—what did you call it—
sequential
life?”

“No.”

The women looked at each other, Jane letting this news sink in before moving to the next fact, which was going to be even harder for Vanessa to believe, much less accept.

“Did I die, Jane? Is that what all this is now, death?”

“No you’re not dead. But—”

“But
what
?”

“Your life won’t progress any farther than today. This is as far as it will go: from now on, today is as old as you’ll ever get. Think of it as coming to the end of a cul de sac when you’re driving: when it happens, you have to turn your car around and go back the way you came.

“You’re forty-three, so everything you experience from now until you die will be your life up
until
today. You’ll travel back and forth across it, setting down here and there but never knowing what age you will be next. No matter where you travel in your life, you’ll always have the mind of the forty-three-year-old you are now. It’s what happens with a flip.”

“This is
ridiculous
, Jane. You’re crazy.”

“I’m not finished, Vanessa. Remember when I ate the black shiny stuff before?”

“That was disgusting. I thought you were crazy to do it and now I know you really are!”

Jane ignored the insult. “Remember how you knew the name of the cloud in your living room?”

“The Aurora Cobb? Yes, but I don’t know how I knew it. It just came to me.”

Jane nodded. “The name came to you because in a previous life you were what’s called a mechanic. Eventually you were retired and your mechanic’s mind was wiped clean. Then you were moved here to Earth to live with a whole new identity as a human being.

“But they need something from you now, they need something from
us
, so we’re all being reawakened, if it’s the right word. They’re making us aware again of our past as mechanics.”

Vanessa barked a scornful
ha!
“So you’re one too? We’re all mechanics? How comforting. Is it like an elite club or a
cabal
? Do they have a secret password?” She hissed the last sentence like someone nearby might be listening.

Jane knew she’d have to handle this explanation carefully because it was plain Vanessa was close to overload or shutting down and dismissing completely what she was saying. Would it be better to use reason or simply make a dramatic demonstration to convince the singer she was telling her the truth?

“Choose a special day in your life. A day in your past where something very important to you happened.”

Vanessa frowned and put the coffee cup down on the bench. She’d had enough of this crap.

“Please just do it, Vanessa. It’ll show you I’m telling the truth. You want concrete proof? I’m trying to give you some right now. Choose a day or an experience that for whatever reason was significant to you. But don’t tell me anything about it. Just bring up as much of the memory as you can.”

“Is this a card trick, Jane? Are you going to take out a deck of cards and show me which one I chose?”

In her best cajoling voice Jane said, “Please—think of one important day or event in your life.”

Vanessa brushed muffin crumbs off her lap. This was ridiculous. She was scared by everything going on but okay—she’d think of a day. What other choice did she have?

Unexpectedly the first thing that came to mind was her Omi baking. Her grandmother used to bake the greatest cookies, cakes, and pies Vanessa had ever eaten. Watching her make these treats instilled in the young girl a lifelong interest in cooking. A happy part of Vanessa’s childhood was spent in the white-haired woman’s kitchen as this alchemist with a rolling pin and a Mixmaster transformed flour, water, sugar, eggs, and spices into endless miracles for the mouth.

Almost as delicious as eating them was inhaling the smells wafting out of the oven while they baked; each treat had its own distinct gorgeous aroma. Vanessa could usually tell by each heady scent what today’s gift was. Cinnamon, vanilla extract, lemon zest, brown sugar, cloves, and oranges … they all had their own signature perfumes. Over the years the little girl became so adept at recognizing and distinguishing between them that Omi would often play a game: she’d open her apartment door but not let the child enter until she’d correctly guessed by sniffing the air what was baking in the oven.

Vanessa’s grandfather died long before she was born so it had always been just Omi and little V together doing stuff. Which was exactly how Vanessa liked it because from the very beginning she was a selfish child who wanted all the cookies, all the kisses, and all the attention.

One day she and her mother went to visit Omi. When the door opened, Vanessa took her usual giant dramatic sniff of the air inside the apartment. Apple strudel—an easy one. The aroma of baking strudel was heavy and pungent even out there in the hall. But Vanessa’s eyes slowly widened while her mouth set into a hard bratty moue.

Yes, an instantly recognizable aroma was in the air, the delectable sweetness of strudel with its cinnamon, butter, baked apples, raisins, and nuts all melting hotly together inside fresh homemade
teig
. But other smells were there too, new and unfamiliar ones. They were what made the girl glare: alien smells, harsh,
masculine
: Aqua Velva aftershave lotion, tobacco, and the slight funk of human sweat. Her Omi’s apartment had never smelled of any of those things before.

Little Vanessa put her hands on her hips and looked at her grandmother reproachfully, as if the older woman had messed up. She demanded to know why it smelled so weird there today. Omi glanced at Vanessa’s mother, who said, “You might as well tell her now. She’s going to find out sooner or later.”

It was the day the girl learned about Omi’s new fiancé. Vanessa was outraged. She was too young to know about loneliness or sex or companionship, so for the first time in her short life she felt betrayed. Because as far as the seven-year-old was concerned, Omi’s home and everything in it belonged to her. All the cookies were only for her. She chose the color of the toilet paper in the bathroom, her own pink flamingo drinking mug sat easy to reach in a kitchen cabinet, and she was allowed to watch whatever TV shows she wanted when she visited. Vanessa had long ago staked her claim to so many things there. She knew she was the queen of her grandmother’s heart, so Omi’s apartment was Vanessa’s kingdom and refuge all in one. But now to her bitter dismay she learned someone else had been coming here
by invitation
.

Thirty-six years had passed since then. The memory of the day and the disappointment had naturally faded from the mind of adult Vanessa Corbin. But smells are unlike any other memories. They remain with us fully a hundred percent forever on some remote desert island of the mind where they keep the lowest profile. If they’re not shaken awake by something, they lie silent and still like sleeping dogs under the table. But once roused, they return as completely as the moment we first encountered them.

Having recalled this memory now, Vanessa looked at Jane and said, “Okay. I’ve thought of something.”

Jane put both hands out in front of her and rubbed them briskly together as if they were cold and she was trying to warm them up. Abruptly stopping, she turned palms up and lifted them together toward Vanessa.

“What? What are you doing?”

Jane said nothing but kept them lifted.

Vanessa looked at the thin black hands. “I don’t understand.” She was so busy watching and wondering what Jane was doing, she’d forgotten to breathe. When she did again, Vanessa inhaled a smell she’d encountered only once in her life: a mixture of sweat, men’s cologne, tobacco, baking apple strudel, old carpets and dust on the sills of closed windows, her grandmother’s Jungle Gardenia perfume, and other Omi things—all combined in one.
That’s
what Jane was doing with her hands—conjuring the exact smell of Omi’s apartment the day of that first betrayal thirty-six years ago.

But it was impossible because Vanessa hadn’t said anything about the memory or the ingredients comprising the singular odor. She’d only said, “Okay, I’ve thought of something.” So how could Jane have known? How could she have recreated the smell thirteen thousand days later?

To her continuing disbelief, Vanessa breathed in and there it was again. Unexpectedly a powerful flood of other completely forgotten childhood memories washed over her. She wanted to say something about it but the deluge was so intense and wonderful she couldn’t gather any words to speak. She closed her eyes, covered her mouth, and let these forgotten parts of her past live again, even if only for seconds.

Watching, Jane said nothing. From the expression on Vanessa’s face, she saw the other woman move beyond the surprise of experiencing that specific childhood smell again to consternation in both her mind and heart on reencountering so many lost pieces of her history. How could I have forgotten these things? Where have these memories hidden in me all these years?

How volatile and untrustworthy memory is. How naive we are to depend on such a fragile, temperamental mechanism to keep our most important records straight.

Vanessa started to shake and cry at the same time. Jane reached over to touch her but the singer shrank away and threw up her arms to keep the other away. She shook her head again and again, tears sliding crooked paths down her face. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t understand any of this. What is going on?”

“Look at me. Vanessa,
look
at me!”

Vanessa looked but her eyes were skittish and wild—the eyes of an animal about to bolt.

“I’m going to explain everything I know to you now, but you
have
to calm down first. Take deep breaths and try to relax, understand? I need your head clear. Breathe slowly, clear your head, and when you tell me you’re ready I’ll explain everything I know. The rest we’re going to have to find for ourselves.” Jane tried to make her voice sound even and calm, assured. She didn’t want to give even a hint she was just as frightened as Vanessa.

But before she could say another word, she was flipped again.

“Who’s the old guy?”

Kaspar and Crebold walked down the country road toward Dean, Vanessa, Jane, and Bill Edmonds. Kaspar had just explained who the others were.

“I don’t know; I’ve never seen him before.”

In a voice as close to a dismissal as he could muster, Crebold scoffed, “What do you mean you don’t know him? This is
your
dream!”

Kaspar jammed his hands in his pants pockets and stopped walking. “Crebold, you’ve done
nothing
but complain since this started. You haven’t helped nor have you told me anything helpful. You’re a fully functional mechanic who’s supposed to know how to fix situations like this. Instead you’ve been acting like a nine-year-old pest. So either shut up or help me—one or the other. I’ve got enough questions of my own about what’s happening. I’m trying to figure this all out as fast as I can. Believe me, if I knew what was what I’d tell you.”

Down the road the Corbins were also watching Bill Edmonds and wondering who he was while he spoke to Jane Claudius.