“I’m just talking, like, hypothetically,” I say.
“Bullshit,” says Greta. “This is all that stuff from your novel. Or what you call your novel. John, do you actually think this is happening to you?”
I look at Greta, and I look at my mom, and I look at my dad, and I look at Penny.
“My name’s not John,” I say.
86
There’s a long, sour pause. I feel spinny from the wine and the bourbon, and the total inappropriateness of my outburst starts to weigh on my chest like a freezer full of body parts, especially since this had been more or less the greatest introduction of a girlfriend to parents in the history of girlfriends and parents.
“You sound like a paranoid schizophrenic,” my sister says. “You get that, right?”
“Theoretically speaking,” my dad says, “what he’s saying is possible. Simultaneous consciousnesses within a single corporeal form, I mean.”
“Victor, this isn’t an amusing scientific debate,” my mom says. “It’s our son.”
“Sorry,” says my dad.
“John,” my mom says, “and I assure you that your name is John because that’s what we called you when you ejected from my uterus, you’ve had some kind of neurological trauma that the doctors were either too incompetent or too overworked to identify. I should’ve spoken to Rogier Ames as soon as this happened. He heads the university’s Neurology Department and he owes me a favor because of some finicky library acquisitions I assisted him with. Yvette Magwood, too, she’s dean of medicine. We’ll help you through this, I promise.”
I press on my temples with stiff forefingers. Why did I say anything? My chair feels like it’s bobbing in an ocean of shame and regret and I grip the table for balance.
“Guys, it’s fine,” I say. “I drank too much. I made a bad joke. This is why people shouldn’t drink with their parents. I’m sorry if I worried you. Everything’s okay.”
“You think I don’t know when you’re lying?” Greta says. “You’re the idiot who taught me how to lie when I was five years old and broke Dad’s desk lamp.”
“That was you?” my dad says.
“I’ll call them first thing in the morning,” my mom says.
“I have some contacts too,” my dad says. “Maybe in Cognitive Science?”
“What if it’s true?” Penny says.
There’s another pause, but this one’s a lot edgier.
“I knew it,” says Greta. “I knew you couldn’t be so perfect. You’re an enabler.”
“Penny,” my mom says, “you seem like a lovely young woman. Let’s not spoil that impression.”
“I don’t presume to know John as well as you do,” Penny says. “I only met him two weeks ago when he walked into my store and told me what is without a doubt the weirdest story I’ve ever heard. I can’t rationally explain any of the things he said to me. But you know what else I can’t rationally explain? How he makes me feel. I’m a basically normal person. I’ve lived a basically normal life. I’ve had good things happen and bad things happen, but very few crazy things happen. I didn’t ask for him to walk into my life. I didn’t ask to fall in love with him. But I did. And I haven’t even said that to him yet. Which makes it so much more awkward that I just said it in front of all of you. Shit. I’ve been in love before. I almost got married once. But it’s never felt like this. Like I don’t know what’s up or down.”
“It’s easy to know what’s up and down,” Greta says. “You just open your eyes.”
“You think I don’t know how corny this sounds?” Penny says. “You think I like feeling this corny?”
“I can’t answer that,” Greta says. “I don’t know you.”
“Well, it’s scary,” Penny says. “Especially when he may or may not be completely psychotic.”
“He’s not psychotic,” my mom says.
“Mom, he thinks he’s from the future,” says Greta.
“Not the future,” says Penny. “An alternate timeline.”
“What’s the difference?” Greta says.
“You should’ve read my book,” my dad says.
“Dad, nobody read your book,” Greta says.
“I don’t want him to be telling the truth,” Penny says. “It’s weird and it’s messy and it freaks me out. But I’m taking it seriously so I can understand where he’s coming from. Because, I know it sounds demented, but what if it’s true?”
“You’re right,” says Greta, “it sounds demented.”
“Mr. Barren,” Penny says, “you’re as close as we’re going to come to an expert in time travel . . .”
“Exactly,” says my mom. “How convenient that his elaborate fantasy world just happens to involve time travel, considering his father wouldn’t shut up about it all through his childhood.”
“You told me to write the book,” my dad says.
“I thought you should get it out of your system,” my mom says.
“You knew it would humiliate me,” says my dad. “And hold back my career. So you could be the successful one and I could be your abashed consort.”
“I didn’t know it would be a bad book about time travel, Victor,” says my mom. “I thought it would be a good book about time travel.”
“Okay,” I say. “That’s enough! Everybody stop talking!”
My family looks at me like it’s possible I’m about to fly into a berserker rage and murder them with my dessert fork. Penny just looks worried.
“Maybe I have lost my mind,” I say. “It feels that way sometimes. But most of the time it feels like the world has lost its mind and I’m the only one keeping it together. And I realize that doesn’t make me sound less crazy. So, how about this. Mom, you can call your expert friends in the morning. Greta, you can make snarky comments to keep the mood light. And, Dad, you can quiz me.”
“Quiz you how?” my dad says.
“Ask me anything,” I say. “About time travel and alternate dimensions, whatever seems relevant or, I don’t know, even irrelevant. I don’t claim to understand everything I’ve experienced, but I’ll do my best to answer.”
“What can I do?” Penny says.
“You can marry me,” I say.
“What?” she says.
“The fact that you don’t immediately think I’m a lunatic,” I say, “is only the foyer of the palace that is all the reasons you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Greta says.
“Well, this is exactly how I imagined this happening,” my mom says.
“This has been the most interesting family dinner I can remember,” my dad says.
“Penny, I think you should say yes,” I say.
“No,” she says.
“Really?” I say.
“Okay, maybe,” Penny says. “I don’t know. I can’t answer that question right now. Fine, probably. Assuming we sort all this out in a way that doesn’t involve you being committed to a high-security mental facility, which is a kind of big assumption under the circumstances, it’s possible I may decide to spend the rest of my life with you. But that’s not a yes. That’s definitely probably not a yes.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Should we start the quiz?” my dad says.
87
My sister is the one who’s supposed to be having the nervous breakdown. My parents weren’t concerned about me at all until I collapsed in a torrent of curses in the construction-site mud.
At McGill University in Montréal, Greta did a double major in philosophy and computer science, which required her to field approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 lame jokes from lame guys at lame bars. The Venn diagram of datable non-idiots pooled between philosophy and computer science majors was anaerobic, or so claimed Greta to explain why she spent so much of her free time working on a smartphone application, which she eventually pitched to her dual-discipline thesis advisers as her field-integrating graduate thesis, allowing her to then spend all her time on it.
Greta has a simple philosophy of life—You Believe What You Do.