“Okay, so my mom lovesTime Brothers, you know that. So I was looking through it, and then I started looking through some other books that she has—it turns out, for a professor, that woman has a lot of time travel shit on her shelf.” Sam was clearly filled with too many words she wanted to say at once. “I think there are two main options, in terms of what’s going on. Not options as in you have a choice—two theories.”
“Okay,” Alice said. Sam was still like this, thank god—thoughtful and smart and willing. Alice wanted to tell her that it was these very qualities that made her a great mom, but didn’t.
“Basically, I think you’re either stuck here or you’re not. So, Scottand Jeff, they have this car, right, and the car carries them around, just like Marty McFly, you know? That’s not you. And the fact that you’re inside your own body, no offense, seems like a bad sign. Like, if there were two of you, and you were watching yourself do things, like inBack to the Future Part II, then obviously you would be able to go back, because otherwise there would be two of you forever, see what I’m saying?”
“Yes?” Alice said.
“I think it’s probably a wormhole. Scott and Jeff went through a wormhole once, do you remember? It’s not in the book, but it was on the show—you know the episode I mean? When they were on Scott’s family’s farm in Wisconsin and it was all, ‘Doop doop doop, guess we’re not time-traveling this time,’ like they were on vacation or whatever, and then Scott was helping his grandmother clean out an old barn and then all of a sudden it was 1970 and Scott was a baby? And spent the whole day as a baby? But he was with his grandmother and you got to see how his mother died? And then the next day, he was himself again, but different? I think it could be like that—like, you went into the barn.”
“And now I’m the baby.”
“Yes, but you know you’re the baby.”
Someone knocked on the bathroom door. It was the only bathroom in the restaurant. Alice turned off the faucet and shouted, “Be right out!” She and Sam made eye contact in the mirror. “I don’t really know what to do, though.”
Sam shrugged. “Let’s start with pizza.”
•••
When they got back to the table, Leonard had already ordered them Coca-Colas, and a wan salad of iceberg lettuce and pale tomatoes sat in the middle of the red-checked tablecloth. Pathetic pizzeria saladswere the only salads Leonard actually liked. The girls settled into their chairs across from Leonard and each took a long gulp of soda. Sam wasn’t allowed to drink soda at home, and so she drank it like crazy when she was with Alice and Leonard.
“Are you sure you need to go to the conference tonight?” Alice asked.
Leonard raised an eyebrow. “Pepperoni? Mushroom? Sausage and peppers? Don’t you already have something planned?”
Sam gasped. “Leonard! You aren’t supposed to know!”
“It’s fine, have a little party.” He smiled. The waiter brought over a glass of red wine, and Leonard thanked him. “I trust you.”
He’d brought his bag—a beat-up satchel from the army/navy store. It was hanging on the back of his chair. Leonard would go straight to the hotel in midtown for the convention. Alice had been so focused on herself, she hadn’t even noticed.
“You’re really going?” Alice asked.
“Oh, come on, you two don’t want me around. You have fun. I’ll call to check in tomorrow morning, but you have the hotel number if you need me. It’s on the fridge.” Leonard took a swig of wine and puckered. “That is... vinegar. But I love vinegar. Happy birthday, my baby.” Leonard raised his glass.
Alice groaned, despite herself. “Dad.”
“Happy birthday, Alice,” he tried instead.
She nodded. “Thanks. Okay.”
An hour later, Leonard slung his bag over his shoulder and headed out with a wave as the bell over the door tinkled. It wasn’t yet eight o’clock. Alice couldn’t remember what happened next, the first time.
30
The house on Pomander seemed smaller at night. somehow the lack of sunlight, meager though the sunlight ever was reaching over the much taller buildings that surrounded their narrow walk, made the space feel even tighter. Alice and Sam had filled the fridge with beer, and they put bowls of potato chips out on the kitchen table. Alice smoked, nervous. Sam was rifling through the closet, pulling out different options.
“Tell me something scandalous,” Sam said.
Alice took a drag and thought about what she would have been most impressed by on her sixteenth birthday. “I’ve had sex with a lot of people.”
Sam stopped and held a clump of dresses to her chest. “How many is a lot?”
She didn’t know the exact number—college had been fuzzy, as had large swaths of her twenties. Did blow jobs count, or times when she’d started having sex but gotten interrupted and then just given up? “Thirty? Or so?” There had been many years when she’d only sleptwith one person, and years when she’d spent six months without so much as a kiss. But there were a lot of years with a lot of people in between.
The look on Sam’s face was somewhere between awe and horror, worse than when Alice had said she would move to New Jersey, but she collected herself quickly. “Okay,” she said. “Tell me. What do I need to know that I don’t know?” Sam and Alice were both virgins, and would stay that way until they were in college. Sam would have two boyfriends before Josh. Three people, total, as far as Alice knew—that was Sam’s list. Alice remembered what it had felt like, their shared belief that they would never, ever have sex with another human, that they would stay virgins until they were old and gray. Alice had forgotten that worry, that she didn’t know what to do with her body, that she didn’t know how to produce pleasure in herself or someone else, but she could feel it right now, the panic and fear and desire all swirling together in her guts.
“Oh god,” Alice said. “Probably a lot? Starting with understanding the clitoris?” It was easier to imagine a teenage boy at Belvedere solving world hunger than it was to imagine a teenage boy at Belvedere able to locate or stimulate the clitoris in 1996.
