House on Alexandria

When I was a child I learned I could not travel in time. So let me say that right away. Not that anyone I knew could, but I did learn that I could slip through time, I would throw my thought back, small thought, rippling thought, and they could make changes that I would notice. That was how it first began, and it was all a game, and I would probably forgotten about it as I got older, except that I found it worked best if I had a photograph to work with. with a photograph I could see the people who’s minds I was touching in the past. And that was how I worked on it, from the photos.

It was a game, of course. I was just making people move a little, shift position. It was a game that only a child would play, like farting and running away with laughter.

We used to visit an old lady we knew. I don’t know how we knew her. A lot of my parent’s friends were like that. Old, and mysterious. Or at least it seemed to me for most of my childhood. We would be introduced to someone, some great aunt, only to never see them again. Weird.

My mother said that she was a family friend and so we would rive down streets filled with tall apartment buildings, until we came to her little house, one of the few remaining single houses on the street. It was covered with plants, so you couldn’t see how large it was, from the outside, but it was small inside and smelled of old things. Mom and she would talk about things, and drink tea and I would try to find *something* to do. I think, when I was very young, my mother would bring coloring books, or something, but later, she either forgot, or I outgrew it, so I was on my own. That’s when I started looking at the photos. She had them covering the walls, and the shelves.

But it is harder to move people in photos where you don’t know them. I couldn’t get them to move, so I got bored quickly.

One day, I don’t remember why, I was left there by myself. My mother would be back later, so I spent the whole day with Mrs. Eppie. We make cracked marbles and fried pears and she told stories of the people in the photos. She had one in the corner that was of one man. He reminded meo f the photos I had seen of my dad when he was young, and I said so.

Mrs. Eppie paused in her story and stood beside me. She was only an inch taller than I then. I think I am taller than her now, if she were still around.

“That’s Luigi,” she said. She squeezed me. “Manny knew him, like he knew your father, but it was really his friend, more than your fathers. She pulled out another photo, also from the shelf, that I hadn’t noticed before. It was of tow men, black and white, hair pasted back, the way my dad still wore his hair, wearing those old-fashioned clothes. They were talking together. It was taken in Echo Park. I recognized that at least. The place never changes.

” That’s your dad and Luigi. This was taken a week before…” She muttered something, and said she had to check the tea kettle. I stared at the two young men. Did I know my dad well enough to make him move. I did know Echo Park. I  had spent many weekends there. As Mrs. Eppie poured the tea I journied back to see what I could do. And that time, it was not just my mind, but me. I was there. Well, there as a thought.  It was the best I had done.

Of course, it was not sepia tone in the past. It was a bright clear cloudless day in May. The two young men were laughing and kidding, and I supposed that was Manny taking the photo, or trying to take it. The two guys were kidding around, and I couldn’t get into their thoughts. I couldn’t get them to do a thing. I was so amazed though, at seeing my dad smiling and happy and so young. It was so cool. I rarely saw my dad laugh. He was always so gruff with me.

He was telling a story to Luigi, who was laughing as well. I turned to look at Manny, to get a good look when Mrs. Eppie asked if I would like sugar and I was back.

And of course, the picture had not moved.

We sat down to tea and I could hardly wait to find out about an uncle I never knew and a best friend. Hard to think my dad, who seemed to have only realatives and not friends, would have known anyone who made him laugh.

“What happened to Manny? What happened to Luigi?” I asked.

“Luigi?” she asked, as though surprised that I would ask about him. “Did they never tell you about Luigi?” She shock her head. “Such a bright young man. So sweet. So helpful. Shame, it was. It was for the Olympics, you know.”

Dad had never mentioned having another brother, so I had *no* idea what was coming.

But my mother came and got me before I could hear any of the story. While she was saying her good-byes, I took the photo and slipped it into my clothes. I had many questions.

But we never went back again. I don’t know why. Perhaps she died. And perhaps I was told, but I don’t remember.

But at least I had the photo.

If I never got to do the things that made me me, who would I have changed. It is not the big things, the natural disasters, the huge, historic moments, the changes, the jobs. It is the littel things. The people you meet, once, but never gain, but who you think of later. It is the children you have or don’t, the argument you have.

And then, you path change, and you don’t buy the house with the snakes, or the one with 2 sunny aches, but with the fridge in the garage, because the kitchen is too small.

But to stop things. To keep the path once another has altered it, si much hard than it seems. The screetching of the wheels leaves a mark on the road.

It helps when you are the only one who is traveling, jumping, back and forth, tinkering bits of time. And if there are others, then we rarely meet, and we don’t cross paths.

It was odd when I first noticed someone was interfering with my own time line, and on purpose yet. Someone very determined to alter the history of my life, the lives of those around me.

My adult self had to keep going back to undo the changes, or stop them, but time, like a river, will reflow, slip over its banks, but not quite return to the river it was before, and so I would lose bits.

But each change I didn’t catch, changed me. I’d lose an experience, a memory. As the distrubances increased, ti changed me. I was becoming someone I did not want to be come.

But what I didn’t learn was who was doing it, and who they were trying to change. It wasn’t me, and yet it was.

If I had known, if I had realized right away, I could have asked when Iw as younger, and not when I was older, more tired, and not in good physical shape, as time jumping does take a bit out of one, especially when trying to fix things.

The meomires of time drifters are different from thos who go only forward in time. And when I found photos changing, and memories of those around me altering, at first I took it to be just a harzard of time. I learned to adjust and not to alter my own time line.

And I knew, when my brother dies, that that was one thing I couldn’t change.

So, why did someone keep trying to do just that.

It is best not to change your own timeline. It is probably a good idea not to change those close to you either, but those are usually the ones we want changed.

It would have been nice it I had had trianing, but I guess the gene, or whatever I have isn’t passed down that often, so there was no one living who had it. Who knows.

The shrine had been in the little nook at the far end of the master bedroom, the one that overlooked the patio they had just come from. It had held old, brown photos of a young man, and then a photo of a coffin with a photo of the same young man on top. There had been a stool by the window, and Micheal supposed that the wife or mother or sister of the young man had sat and stared out the window at the garden they had built together, and then back at the brown and white photos. Micheal, always the storyteller, had made up stories about the young man, though he had never had a name for him. He didn’t even know the family that had lived there then. They had left at least 10 or 15 years before, and those photos, and the look of the young man was far older than that. The house had been built in the 1930s, and the style of clothes the young man wore bore that time. Perhaps he had even built the house for his lover. Who knows?

The bothersome agent was trying to get his attention, to show him the other rooms, and so he went with her, wondering when she would show him the basement, that lay between the main floor and the garage. When he had first sheltered there, it had felt like a warren, and he was a rabbit, safe from the coyotes that might be chasing him.

The view from the other bedrooms on the top floor did not have quite as good. The rooms looked out on the houses next door. He wasn’t sure what he would do with those rooms once they owned the house.

As they strated down the stairs, he turned and looked back, but the painting that had hung at the top of the stairs was long gone. He had played, though never really believing, that it’s eyes followed him when he walked, as he had seen in the old horror movies. It hadn’t though.

As Michael expected, they went down into the basement next, though the agent called it a rec room. The walls were smooth and cold, despite the heat of the spring day, and the saloon was still intact, though the pool table, which had been in a state of disrepair was long gone. He imagined that Brian would have grand plans for this. God, he fell into that stereotype so well, wanting to decorate, though that wasn’t his occupation.

As they turned to go down into the vaulted garage, he spied the door to the little nook of a room. It was unlocked, which it hadn’t been before. It had no windows, which made sense, being in the depths of the house.

The agent smiled, and took his arm as if to guide him away. "That, I have been told, was the sewing room."

What an odd room for a woman to sit and sew in. It didn’t make any sense at all. He stared. It had a lower ceiling than the other rooms, and he almost hit his head. The agent had finished going down the stairs and was pointing out the garage, and the driveway. This was the end of the tour.

Michael had never hidden in the garage. It was quite cold, like a cave. The ceiling was two stories high it seemed. What had they kept in here, a blimp? What odd people had lived here. He had felt that as a child and he was feeling that now. As he stared up at the ceiling he though he saw hocks. So, they had suspend things, but what?

The agent stretched out her hand, and he took it, giving him his card. "Tell them I’m interested," he said. Micheal walked out to his car, and drove away, but he only for a block, and only until he saw the agent leave. Then he returned, and parked in front of the house, staring at it, thinking.

To say that Micheal had never seen the house before was a lie, but he was good at pretending, and so looked at each room of the tour by the real estate agent as though with new eyes. He actually was surprised at how much the house had changed since the last time he had hidden in its walls. The plants were gone from the conservatory. He had expected that, although he still thought he could smell their dead, dry skeletons clinging to the brick walls.

"But the garden is for sale separately," the agent said, when he walked out on the patio. The mulberry, whose branches had intermingled with the rose bush, long gone wild, was now trimmed back to a reasonable tree. The rose looked as though it had never gone wild. He looked across to where the agent pointed and sighed. He had hoped to have the lower garden as well, but knew that they, he and his partner, could not afford both.

He pretended to be looking at the details of the upper patio, where he stood, nodded his head and sighed. The current owners had removed the garden furniture, so quaint, though, rusted, with new plastic furniture that had no soul at all. I will replace that with those lovely iron chairs that used to be here, he thought.

The agent was trying to draw his attention to the greenhouse, which had had no work done to it, though you could walk into it now, without having to scramble over brambles. The windows were completely gone now, and it looked as though nothing had been grown in there since he had played and hidden there so long ago. I’ll replace the windows too, with antique glass. I’m sure I’ll be able to find some.

Now if only he could get his partner to fall in love with this fallen lady. It would take a lot of work, but he knew that Brian would take pleasure in restoring it.

They returned to the house, and went upstairs. The master bedroom was bare of both furniture and rugs, and he could see where the wooden floor had buckled in the Silmar quake. He had been in that room, hiding then, though at the time, he hadn’t known there was to be a earthquake. It was just that was the only place he had to go.

The agent was going on about the fine wood, and plaster and all, and non doubt downplaying the damage to the floor, but he would have been disappointed if it had been repaired. It would have taken away from the feel of the house, and it would have felt stale. He stroked over to the corner where the memorial had stood, but though the shelves were still there, the photos were gone.