“Okay, all,” he began and started to clear the table. “I’m gonna take a nap for a bit. Late night,” he added.
I quickly stood and motioned for his mom to sit back down. “I got this, Mrs. H.,” I said. “You relax and I’ll clean up. Mikey, I’ll be up in afew.”
“Ummmm, I’m kinda tired, Coop.”
“Ummmm, and I don’t care,” I replied. “Be up in five.”
Mikey shrugged his shoulders and then headed to his mom’s side of the table where he kissed the top of her head. “Thanks, Mom. Great meal. Next Sunday can we make Dad’s fave?”
“Biscuits and gravy?” she asked, furrowing her brow in question.
He nodded.
“I’ve asked you a million times if you wanted biscuits and gravy, Michael.”
“Yeah, I know, but I’ve been thinking about Dad quite a bit lately. Can we?”
“Well of course, honey,” she answered.
“Do you remember that time I smushed his face into a plate of it?” Mikey asked out of the blue. “He was so angry.” Mikey laughed out loud and made a show of wiping his eyes with his fingers and then his mouth like he was his father with a face covered in goo. “And . . . and . . . then . . . ” he could barely continue due to his laughing. “And then Dad licked his lips and went . . .mmmm,before throwing a biscuit across the kitchen at me.”
Mrs. H. teared up at the memory, smiling as the dam finally broke and cascaded down her cheeks. “What made you think of that, honey?” she asked.
“I dreamed about Dad last night, Mom. He was happy and waving at me.”
Mrs. H. sat up straight, her mouth agape. “You did?” she asked. “And where was he?”
“I’m not sure, but definitely some place nice, I think. He waved like all was good,” he said, smiling. “Seeing him was really nice.”
“Thank you for sharing that with us, son.”
With that, Mikey headed upstairs.
Mrs. H. and I turned and stared at each other, neither of us quite sure what we’d just witnessed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: Mike
Istared out of my window in wonderment. The street where I lived looked exactly the same. Literally everything was as I remembered. The decorations, the smells, the posters on my childhood bedroom walls, Mom’s incense wafting up the staircase filled my brain with nostalgia and longing. I’d wondered whether Cooper would look or be the same. He was still seventeen. Apparently, I was too. On the outside. But I had a secret. I was twenty-seven on the inside.
Walking into the bathroom I leaned closer to the mirror above the sink. “Holy shit,” I whispered, touching the skin around my eyes. “You’re actually seventeen again.” I widened and then relaxed my eyes again. Not a single crow’s foot. I looked amazing.
Mom hadn’t mentioned the possibility that I could land in another dimension and remember where I was from. Was I supposed to remember everything? But then again, I’d never read a firsthand account from anyone who had actually achieved interdimensional time travel, but if they existed I’m quite sure it’d involve more than drinking some marigold juice. Who exactly was my mother and where’d she get this gift? Who was Druzella for that matter? How on earth had those two loon-boon spirit heads come up with this trick?
Now that same mystical creature was downstairs acting like nothing out of the normal was happening. She didn’t know. Should I tell her? If I did, would she believe me? Knowing the old Mom and now this Mom, she probably would. I blinked my eyes over and over again. This shit could not be real, but every time I opened them, the seventeen-year-old me wasstaring back from the mirror.
I questioned how the necklace with Mom’s ring traveled with me. When I was downstairs eating breakfast I casually checked the kitchen for any evidence that adult Mike had been there. There was no wallet, car keys, or cell phone of his anywhere in the kitchen.The kitchen was similar to the one I’d been in a day ago except that the French doors weren’t in yet. Mom had those installed two years ago in the future after wanting to invite her garden into her kitchen.
Mom looked amazing, especially compared to the last few months of her life. I wondered if the cancer was growing in her yet. I had wild thoughts like wishing I could have returned to an even earlier date and talked Dad out of going to work that day. My mind was in overdrive as I considered the consequences of being here. What could I affect? What should I change?
Suddenly the bathroom door burst open and Cooper stood in the doorway with his arms crossed. “Okay, mister. What the heck was all that about?” he asked, moving to my side while I returned his gaze in the mirror.
“What waswhatabout?” I delayed, knowing full well what he meant.
“Nice sage, Mom. Wasn’t that Dad’s favorite, Mom. You look pretty, Mom,” he mimicked.
“Well, she did.”
“I know that, Mikey, but clue me in next time we’re going on an all-out schmoozefest. I want some credit too,” he said. “Now tell me, what are we after?” He ran his hand across the back of my neck, smoothing down some fly-away hair along my neck line. “Let me trim your hetero hair,” he stated, opening the top drawer for the hair trimmers.
