Turnabout (9 page)

Dr. Reed stumbled backward.

“I’m not,” he said. “I promise. I know we can fix this.”

But Amelia saw Dr. Jimson, still standing by the door, shaking her head sadly. And she realized something for the first time. These were not gods who had saved her life and promised her all these extra years. They were fallible human beings, practically as confused as she was about what unaging meant. They might or might not be able to restore her lost memories. They might or might not be able to stop her from forgetting more. They would try to guide her and help her, but they were not experts in life, only science—and that had its limits.

Amelia thought back almost ninety years to a day when her four-year-old cousin had fallen into a flood-swollen creek. Amelia and her mother and sisters and aunt and cousins were washing clothes on the rocks of the creek, and Corabelle had wandered upstream, picking wildflowers. Nobody knew she
was in the water until they heard her screams. Amelia, who was only twelve, immediately shucked off her skirt and crouched to leap into the creek and grab Corabelle as the water pulled her past.

“No!” Amelia’s mother screamed. “Amelia, no!”

But Amelia was already in midair. The minute she landed in the water, it began tugging on her, pulling her downstream. Amelia was a strong swimmer, but her strokes were almost useless. Her head went under once, and then again, but each time she fought her way back to the surface. Blindly she reached out—and touched her cousin’s dress. She grabbed it and yanked her cousin’s body toward her own. She pushed Corabelle’s head above water, but that motion sent her own mouth and nose back down. She gulped in water and choked. With what might have been her last burst of strength, she thrust Corabelle toward the shore. Miraculously, someone caught her. Amelia tumbled in the current again, until her arm caught on a low-hanging tree limb. She held on for dear life, panting and coughing out water. After a long time someone reached out and pulled her back to solid ground. Amelia was too far gone to know if it was an aunt or a cousin or a sister. But she sat up and took notice when her mother ran to her side.

“Mom—” Amelia moaned, reaching out for a hug.

Her mother slapped her.

“You fool! You could have drowned!” Her
mother fell on her knees and wrapped her arms around Amelia’s shoulders. “How could you disobey like that?” She slapped her again.

Amelia pulled back, confused. “But I saved Corabelle’s life.”

Amelia’s mother sobbed. “But I didn’t want to lose you, too!”

And then Amelia thought that she had got to Corabelle too late, that the little girl had died anyway. But that was wrong, because suddenly Amelia’s aunt was there too, hugging Amelia and shrieking, “Thank you! Thank you!”

Corabelle died the next spring of an unknown fever. But the memory of Corabelle’s near drowning haunted Amelia for years, most of all because of her mother’s reaction. Long after Corabelle had faded in Amelia’s mind to a faint memory of a laughing, dark-haired child, Amelia could still vividly recall the feel of her mother’s alternating slaps and hugs. Only when Amelia was a mother herself did Amelia understand how confused her mother had been, how proud she was of Amelia’s bravery, but how furious at her disobedience, how worried about her life. Thinking back, Amelia realized that that day was the first time that she had doubted either of her parents, that she began to realize that they didn’t know everything, weren’t perfect.

And now the parents of her second life, Dr. Reed
and Dr. Jimson, were confused too, though they were trying much harder than Amelia’s mother had to make her think they were still in control.

Amelia looked straight at Dr. Reed and said, “You don’t know anything.”

“I always thought the next thing you said should have been, ‘Now leave me to my memories, what few I have left,’” Anny Beth said, laughing.

“Thanks. You’re more than eighty years late supplying me with a comeback line,” Melly said, but she giggled anyway. “Dr. Reed looked stricken enough as it was.”

They were reminiscing, something they rarely did. But it was morning now, and they were still in the anonymous hotel in an unknown place, facing an unknown future. Melly thought this was a way to remind themselves who they were and had been. She usually thought she was the only one who needed that reassurance, but Anny Beth had been the one to unleash the flood of memories this time.

She’d been standing at the window, looking at the unfamiliar scenery outside: a few cacti, a narrow road, and sand as far as the eye could see.

“Bill always wanted to live in the desert,” she said.

Bill had been Anny Beth’s husband for a decade, until he was nearly fifty and Anny Beth was barely thirty. They’d been the same age when they got married. She had never told him about Project Turnabout, and he had never guessed. “But he was going to soon,” Anny Beth had explained to Melly the day she left him.

“You are one tough broad,” Melly had answered. “Can you quit your husband just like that?”

“Watch me,” Anny Beth said, but her voice held none of its usual buoyancy, and she turned her face so Melly couldn’t see.

They’d schemed together to get the agency to fake Anny Beth’s death, “so at least he won’t go mooning around wondering where I went,” Anny Beth said. Anny Beth and Melly moved to Minnesota and threw a party the day of her fake funeral. Melly found the “Anny Beth Flick Funeral” Web site on the Internet, but tried to keep Anny Beth away from the computer as long as the Web page was posted.

For her part, Melly had never married this time around—Anny Beth teased her about being a spinster.
Spinster,
of course, was a word that no one used anymore. It was fashionable never to marry in the twenty-first century. Melly wondered about herself—in the twentieth century, when most people got married, so did she; in the twenty-first, when marrying was akin to admitting an affinity for horses and buggies instead of electric cars, she’d followed the trend once again. But she’d been bowing to the restrictions of Project Turnabout, not society. She knew she wasn’t strong enough to walk away from a husband she loved, the way Anny Beth had. And what was the alternative?

Now she sat beside Anny Beth looking out into
the desert, wondering about the alternatives for the rest of her life.

“So what are we going to do?” Melly asked.

“Call the agency. We need them to give us fake ID so we can get a new place.” But Anny Beth made no move toward her computer.

“You want to move here?” Melly asked without enthusiasm.

Anny Beth shrugged. “Seems as good as anyplace else. There aren’t many places left without twenty-four-hour cameras going.” For the last several decades every major city—and most minor ones—had had all public streets under constant video camera surveillance, with the tape available at any time from any computer. It had cut crime down considerably, but Melly knew what Anny Beth was implying: If the tabloid reporter knew what they looked like, they couldn’t hide in any city.

“Remember when we were in our tour-the-world phase?” Melly asked. When they were in their midsixties the second time around, they both got the travel bug bad. They each circled the world twice. “I said I’d rather live in Timbuktu than anywhere grass won’t grow. How could we live here?”

“Want to go somewhere else?”

Melly shrugged. “Where else can we avoid the cameras?”

“Then it’s sand, sweet sand,” Anny Beth said.
“You live long enough, you’re bound to have to eat your words one time or another.”

That sounded ominous to Melly’s ears. She knew they both needed to get out of this blue funk. “Anyhow, if we’re going to find someone to take care of us when we get younger, it’ll have to be someone without nosy neighbors to ask why we’re shrinking, not growing. We need a hermit. And if there are any hermits left in the world, it’d be in Sky, New Mexico.”

Her voice shook, but she went to the computer anyhow and instructed it to dial the agency. The cheery face of the agency secretary quickly appeared on the screen.

“Melly!” Agatha said. “What a surprise! I thought you and Anny Beth only checked in once a year. What gives?”

Melly explained. Agatha’s face grew more concerned with each word.

Agatha began punching buttons on her computer before Melly finished her last sentence. “Oh, you’ve got to come back, then. Let me arrange a flight—”

“No!” Melly said. She could feel her jaw thrusting forward stubbornly. She knew the image Agatha saw on her screen was of a petulant child. She tried to sound mature and decisive, but her voice didn’t work that way anymore. “We’re fine. We just need
new ID. And some way to transfer our bank accounts that can’t be traced.”

Agatha sighed, but she stopped punching buttons. “I’ll talk to the directors and see what we can do. But you know this is very exasperating for them. Why do you insist on fighting the inevitable?”

Anny Beth stepped up behind Melly. “Because coming back to the agency is not inevitable. It’s out of the question.”

Melly gave her a glance of gratitude. Agatha sighed once more, then said patronizingly, “Whatever you say. Call back tomorrow and I’ll let you know the directors’ decision. Good-bye.”

Agatha’s image faded from the screen.

“They’re not going to be happy with us,” Melly muttered.

Anny Beth shrugged. “They don’t have to be happy. They just have to help.”

Melly looked out the window, thinking about settling in in this strange place. “We’ll have to get them to transfer your college credits, too,” she said.

“Yeah,” Anny Beth said. “Not that it matters. You know I’m just playing around in college. It’s not like I’m going to use this degree for anything.”

Melly nodded. She watched the sand blowing in the wind. Now that they were kids again, nobody expected them to be useful anymore. Funny—she’d never realized how much being young and being old
were alike. But she still had a big goal, she reminded herself: finding surrogate parents. Surely there was someone here—

Anny Beth stood up and stretched. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starved. How about some biscuits and gravy?”

Melly recognized the offer for what it was: comfort food, pure and simple. They’d both eaten biscuits and gravy growing up in Kentucky. Nobody ate them nowadays. Gravy had practically been outlawed after the cholesterol scare of 2010.

“You’ll clog your arteries,” Melly warned.

“Haven’t so far,” Anny Beth said.

“Then you’ll clog your pores.”

Anny Beth’s hands flew to her face. “Oh, no—zits!” she exclaimed melodramatically. “I forgot I’d have to worry about those again soon.”

Melly nodded, rubbing the small pimple beginning to grow on the tip of her nose. “Now, that’s one human affliction I really expected science to cure by now,” she said.

“That and the common cold,” Anny Beth said.

“And baldness,” Melly said.

“And aging,” Anny Beth said. When Melly didn’t answer right away, she added, “I guess there’s still hope.”

“For the Cure?” Melly said. “Not in my lifetime.”

The words were out before she realized how
meaningful the phrase really was.

“If they came up with another possibility,” Anny Beth said, “would you try it?”

“I don’t think so,” Melly said. “Who’d want to be a teenager forever?”

“People who don’t remember what it’s like,” Anny Beth said. “Peter Pan.”

Anny Beth got up and went into the kitchenette. Melly could hear her muttering to the automatic food machine: “Throw in some flour—oh, that’s right, you need precision. One cup. And a half cup of milk . . . ”

Melly went over and stood in the kitchen door to watch the machine stamp out perfectly round circles of dough, flip them onto a pan, and begin baking.

The biscuits, Melly knew, would not taste anything like what she remembered from her childhood—her first childhood. But they would be adequate. And how trustworthy was her memory, anyway, after 184 years?

“Remember when we believed in the Cure?” she asked Anny Beth dreamily.

“Something like that’s hard to forget,” Anny Beth snorted.

Mr. Johnson wanted it to stop.

“You have the chance to stay any age. Why pick seventy-five?” Dr. Reed argued. “You still have arthritis. You still have wrinkles. You’re still bald.”

“And I still have most of my memories,” Mr. Johnson said so softly that Amelia had to lean in to hear him. Maybe it had been a little too soon to throw away her hearing aid. She’d placed it in the trash can only moments before being summoned to this meeting. The doctors said Mr. Johnson owed it to his fellow Project Turnabout volunteers to discuss his decision, but Amelia thought their true agenda was to have everyone gang up on him and talk him out of it.

“What’s a few memories, here and there?” a gruff voice came from the back of the room. Amelia recognized it as one of the other men in the project, Mr. Simon. “You want to be an old man the rest of your life?”

Amelia thought that was a funny question, given that they’d all expected to be old the rest of their lives before Project Turnabout came around. But nobody laughed. Mr. Johnson sat still at the front of the room. He seemed to be staring off into blank space, but then he began answering Mr. Simon.

“My wife died when I was seventy-four,” he
said. “I don’t want to forget her funeral. Everyone came up to me and told me what a wonderful woman she’d been. . . .”

His voice trailed off. Amelia waited for some-one—probably Mrs. Flick—to break the tension with a joke like, “Come on, people say things like that at everyone’s funeral. Probably half the people there didn’t even know your wife.” But the room was silent. All the old people seemed lost in memories of their own—memories they also feared losing.

“Look, we’re very sorry about the memory problems,” Dr. Jimson said impatiently. “Believe me, we’re working as hard as we can to fix that. But this decision would be permanent. In our lab tests, once we stop an animal’s unaging, we can’t start it again. Trying just . . .” She cleared her throat and hesitated for a second, then went on, more forcefully than ever, “Trying just kills the animal.”