Q: A Novel (27 page)

I gesture in the direction
of young Q. “Pants notwithstanding, it is difficult to find fault with that creature.”

Old Q smiles. “Difficult to say the least,” she says. “I suppose you came back to try to keep your old self from leaving me.”

“More or less,” I say. “I don’t have a specific plan. This time travel stuff is all a bit dodgy.”

Q nods her head. “I have a friend who went back fifty years to plant a tree in the backyard of her house in Brooklyn, you know, so she would have some foliage. She tried planting flowers and bamboo, but she could never get the sort of coverage she wanted. Always felt she had started too late in the garden. So she went back in time. When she returned, she had a giant Turkish filbert and a half century of bird droppings.”

“Was the tree nice?”

“Magnificent.”

“What type of shape were the leaders and gutters in?”

“They were a wreck.”

“I suppose there are always tradeoffs.”

“And no guarantees.”

“What about you? What brings you back?”

“No specific plan. I thought I’d check out some of the nice restaurants.” She smiles. “And visit with you, of course.”

This warms my heart, but it is a surprise. Insomuch as I had time to think about it, I presumed Q’s presence was a coincidence. That she had come back to observe her younger self or to confer some wisdom upon her. It had not crossed my mind that she had come to see me. I presumed she would have no interest in this. Throughout my years of obsessing on what happened years ago at that Thanksgiving dinner, it has always been axiomatic that, thereafter, Q loathed me.

“You don’t hate me?” I ask quietly.

“No. I never hated you. The day you proposed to me was the happiest of my life. I’ll never forget you getting down on your knee under the whale, and pulling out the ring, and the little girl coming up to you and giving you a quarter.”

“I thought it was a little boy.”

“Oh, it was most definitely a little girl.” Q smiles. “Don’t get me wrong. I was hurt and upset. I didn’t understand why you left me. But I always loved you.” She pauses and looks at me. “I never told you to go, you know. You were the one who left.”

I nod. “I know that.”

“None of it made any sense to me, not even at the time,” she says. “I didn’t understand how you could have known about my father’s business connections. And I certainly didn’t understand why you would try to turn me against him. They arrested him seven years later for bribing a Department of Buildings official. The full extent of his machinations became public. He went to prison and was disgraced. Did you know this?”

“I did. I was sorry to hear about that.”

“Thank you for saying that. But that didn’t explain how you could have known about the dummy corporation. After the case became public, I examined all the evidence meticulously, and it was clear to me that you couldn’t have gotten to the bottom of everything without a subpoena. Someone had to have told you. The only possible person was my father himself, but I quickly dismissed that possibility.” She smiled. “Then, several years ago, they announced the discovery of time travel, and I had my answer.”

Again, Q takes my breath away. “You mean, you searched for thirty years for an explanation for why I acted as I did? All that time, you gave me the benefit of the doubt?”

“Yes.”

“What gave you such confidence in my love for you?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“I could have been anytime, anywhere. How did you know I would be here today?”

Q thinks about this for a moment. “I remember this day,” she says. “I remember everything, of course, but I remember this day in particular. The woman who sold you the pear had been my mother’s best friend when I was a kid. When I saw her that day at the market—today—it had been fifteen years since our last meeting. I was surprised and very happy to see her.”

“She seemed nice. Your mother was nice.”

“I finally put it all together when I remembered that man outside the record store. For the life of me, I don’t know what made me think of him, but one day it came to me that it was you. Funny thing, I think I even told you today that the man looked a little bit like you.”

“You did indeed.”

“Is that him over there?” Q gestures in the direction of I-60.

“Yes.”

“So that’s the villain. That’s the man that ruined my life.” I can’t tell whether she is being playful or not.

“Yes,” I say. “Mine too.”

“Funny, he looks harmless enough.”

In the distance, I-60 is either overridden with excitement or in turmoil, again I cannot tell. I have been keeping only half an eye on him throughout my conversation with Q. At one point he makes a start toward young Q, then retreats. Later, he begins walking toward Irregular’s, then retreats again. After the second false start he begins pacing and muttering to himself.

The Q sitting next to me asks, “What is he thinking?”

“I don’t know. It’s as much a mystery to me as it is to you. I hope he isn’t just thinking about himself. I don’t think so. I think he’s wondering whether he’ll make my life better, and yours, if he goes through with his plan. At the very least I’m sure he has your interests in mind. I met lots of versions of myself over the years. You were the love of each of their lives.”

She smiles. “So you met this particular older version of yourself before today?”

“Yes, three times in the preceding few weeks. He’s very thoughtful and well read. A bit slow with the check, though.”

Q absorbs the significance of this. Quietly, she says, “If you don’t mind my asking, I mean, if it isn’t too personal, what is it that he says to you? I don’t mean about my father’s duplicity. I mean what he said to make you resolve to leave me.”

I hold my breath.

“I know I shouldn’t ask,” she says. “Maybe it’s something I should never know, maybe it’s something horrible about me.”

“No. I told you. He loves you.”

“What is it, then? I’ve been living with doubt about this all these years.”

“We have a child,” I say. “A sweet, magnificent, and loving child. He dies and it ruins us.”

Q groans, a deep, pained cry from her soul.

I-60 appears to
have solidified his resolve. He is walking now, slowly, with the pronounced limp in his stiff right leg, into Irregular’s House of Records and Fudge.

“What are you going to do?” Q asks.

“What should I do?”

“It’s your life.”

“Is it?”

“That seems like a profoundly complicated question.”

I nod. “It’s true, and I have perhaps five minutes to resolve it for myself before that sixty-year-old version of myself goes into Irregular’s, takes me for a walk in the woods, and tells me how to drive you away once and for all.”

“Five minutes. That hardly seems long enough to decide.”

“I wish I had more time.”

Q nods.

“Of course, that doesn’t mean what it used to. And to think that I have had more than forty years to consider what I would do if I had this day to live over again.”

Q nods again but says nothing else. She never wasted words. I had always liked this about her and I like it now.

“Have you had a good life?” I ask.

“I had a life,” she says. “And all that that means.”

“Would you have wanted to know? I mean, now that you know what it is that I knew, would you have wanted to know it?”

“This is just like the question you asked me on the drive up in the rental car?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

“I’m not sure that the question matters very much.”

“Of course it matters. In fact, it’s the only question that matters: do you want to make your life better?”

“Better,” Q repeats quietly.

“If we cannot answer this question affirmatively, then how can we possibly go on? We have to believe that things can be better than they are. And we have to believe that we ourselves have the capacity to make them better. It’s the fundamental drive of a human being to improve himself and those he loves. It’s why we want to make our children’s lives better. It’s what separates us from other animals. So, I ask you again: if you had the opportunity to change your life, would you take it?”

Q smiles. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

In that moment,
I understand. Or at least I think I understand. The thing about the eternal verities is that they are always changing.

I have gone through phases. For a time, I fancied myself an objectivist, after reading
Atlas Shrugged
, as every good seventeen-year-old does. I preached the virtue of selfishness and saw happiness as the moral purpose of life. Then I did the usual one-eighty and turned nihilist. I abandoned my winter coat for a cardigan sweater, starting taking taxicabs, and began smoking cigarettes. I have no reason to hold anything back now, so I admit these were nicotine-free cigarettes, only one of several ways in which I hedged my bets. I stayed on the sidelines as the postmodernists waged their quiet revolution. At times I believed there was no truth, at other times that the truth simply could not be known. I experimented freely with ethical constructs, as one might with clothing or hair styles. Each seemed appealing for a while, if only for its novelty, but ultimately, inevitably, inadequate. Sometimes I ate meat. Sometimes I did not. Persistently, sunscreen seemed important, but I never managed to integrate it into a coherent worldview. Most of the time I had no idea what to do.

Now, for a moment at least, I have lucidity.

I lean over and kiss Q passionately, and the feelings of a half century of solitude and longing are released in an instant. It occurs to me that our moments of most intense passion are destined to occur in or near an organic garden. I feel Q release the same grief, all immediately expelled from each of us. The heaviness is dispensed, and then there is love, deep abiding love.

“It occurs to me that I have never seen Barcelona,” I say with a smile. “If we leave now, we can catch the red-eye and make a day of it—or a week or a month.”

“Or a year,” she says.

“Yes, a year.”

We kiss again.

I have wondered before what it is like to be old and in love, and now I have my answer. I feel my heart patter and blood rush to my face. A palliative warmth runs over my entire body; its healing powers extend even to my hopeless knee. I feel optimistic, giddy. I begin to make plans. Winters in Sedona, summers on Lake Moraine in Canada. Perhaps we will return to our time, perhaps we will stay in the then-now. It doesn’t matter. Maybe a late marriage—at City Hall, just the two of us against the world, or with Elvis in Vegas, or the dream of the bowling alley nuptials finally realized. We will reconnect with old friends and travel. We will see El Encierro, at long last, and a day game at Wrigley. I even think of running. All in that moment.

You may have wondered yourself about what it is like to be old and in love. Now you too have the answer. It is exactly, precisely, and wondrously the same.

We kiss yet again.

This makes a bit of a scene, two codgers mashing in a public park. The young Q notices. She is standing by a pile of pears, watching us until we feel her gaze. We look up, see her, and she smiles warmly. She walks over, has something to say, but gets a closer look at us and rethinks.

“Do I know you?” she asks.

“No, dear.”

“Well, I just wanted to say how nice it is to see two people in love like you are. You just don’t see it every day.”

“You
do,” I say.

Young Q is taken aback. I remember that scrunching of the eyebrows. It was irresistible then, which is now. Old Q squeezes my hand.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to tell you a secret. It may not sound like much, but it’s the key to a happy life, to your happy life.”

“Okay.”

“You’re with that man, aren’t you? The one that just walked into the record store.”

“Yes, I am.”

“He loves you,” I say, triumphantly. “More than you will ever know.”

Acknowledgments

Writers are often asked, and bothered by, the question of whether they have drawn an idea from their own life. I am too happy to be called a writer to be annoyed. For the record, let me say unequivocally that I have never been visited by anyone offering a foreboding vision of my own future.

My influences are more conventionally situated in space and time, but in their own ways more profound. Carl Lennertz of HarperCollins, my superb editor, runs his shop the way I try to run my own, and I am proud to call him my friend. My agent, Janet Reid, is the champion of my career and allows me to do what I love to do. I am equally proud to call her my friend. The truth is, though, she and Carl are the Johnny-come-latelies in my life.

I have had the same best friend since high school. During these twenty-five years, Ira Kaufman and I have explored in innumerable conversations almost every mundane question imaginable—from the merits of insurance in blackjack to the moistness of various snack cakes. Our senses of humor are so entwined with each other’s, I can no longer distinguish which jokes I tell are mine and which are his. Suffice it to say that his contribution to this book is substantial.

My parents, Mathew and Sherry, continue to stand behind me in whatever I do, as they have throughout my life, and have more confidence in me than I have in myself. I have said many times that my mother is my best and most encouraging reader. My father is simply the best man I know.

Anyone reading my other books will note that this list has not changed in some time. Indeed my personal life has been marked by more continuity than change. The notable exception was when my wife, Valli, appeared in my life three years ago, together with Eamon and Suria Vanrajah. Eighteen months later, Mattie joined us. Being a parent to Eamon, Suria, and Mattie is the great privilege of my life. The experience has changed me in the most fundamental and best way imaginable. I expect it is obvious to anyone reading this or any of my other novels that I have a heavy dose of existential angst. To my astonishment, it is almost all gone now. When I play Wiffle ball with Eamon or watch
The Simpsons
with Suria, everything seems as it should be. And I get giddy about seeing my brilliant and beautiful baby girl. She is downstairs as I am writing this, as she often is when I work. When I finish, in a paragraph or two, I am going to walk downstairs and give Mattie a kiss and a few tickles, and will feel, as I always do, that my life is perfect.

The best part, though, is being Valli’s husband. Being married is challenging in ways I did not expect but rewarding in ways I never dreamed. I found my person, and I am lucky beyond words. I must confess here to one intersection of life and art. While no one from my future offered a menacing vision of what is to come, I was visited by an older version of myself on the day of our wedding. Valli and I were walking into City Hall when I noticed him there, wearing a cardigan sweater and corduroy pants that were unmistakably mine. He seemed like a nice and happy old man, with soft eyes and deep laugh lines etched like fissures into his cheeks. We only had time for him to say one thing to me. He held the door for Valli and me, smiled broadly, and whispered in my ear, “Do it again. Do it again.”