“I want to do that again.”
“Same conditions as before.”
Three times, yes, three times, back.
We are at the cabin in the woods.
“Yes. It was twenty-five years ago. Thereabouts. Just about Christmas time. I didn’t remember before. I didn’t want to remember. I put it out of…out of my life.”
A fire glows through the cabin windows.
“I’m here with a friend. A close friend.”
We’re at the windows. There is a heat coming through them, not entirely from the fire. From the people, from the voices within. Their words crack and snap like logs caught in flames.
“You going to look in?”
“This is not my story.”
“I want you to look in.”
Two men yell at each other. One is naked, one covers himself with a blanket.
I turn back to Edward. His face is red, tight, his nostrils flare, his eyes are wide. “Well? Aren’t you going to say something?”
“This is not my story. I have nothing to say.”
“That’s me in there.” He flaps tonight’s blanket around himself like wings. The moon and stars catch the fire’s light and shroud him. “I’m gay.”
I shake my head. “You’re not sure.” His Spirit Guide, a long-necked, graceful swan, an adult shedding its childhood down, trumpets to me. I thank it for clarifying the situation.
“Sorry, my mistake. You weren’t sure.”
“I’m gay and that’s Brian and this is a cabin just on the Quebec side of Ottawa Falls, dead of winter. He proposed to me here.”
“The life you were suppose to have, not the one you chose.”
“I said no because…”
The voices in the cabin yell, shriek. The swan flares its wings, stretches its neck, calls across the years as if calling across a pond.
“…I thought I had to.”
The Then-Edward opens the cabin door, puts on clothes as he walks, sits in the snow to put on boots, walks around back to a jeep, pats his pockets, throws up his hands, walks into the night.
“It was mile to town. Damn near froze to death walking. Decided my parents were more important. A good job was more important. This was thirty-five years ago, you understand. It was a different world back then.”
The cabin, the woods, the snow start fading.
“I married my wife, Andrea, on the rebound. Don’t get me wrong. I love her. Dearly. And our kids.”
My living room shapes around us.
“And I’ve never done anything. Been too terrified. Always watching myself, making sure I didn’t do anything, give my feelings away.”
We are back. He pulls the blanket tighter.
“Will anybody learn about this?”
“Only If you tell them.”
“I don’t regret my life. I want you to know that.”
“But?”
“But.”
***
“You call this stuff LifePath. You said I chose one path when I wanted the other. Can I get back to that other path?”
“I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“You got me there. Can you…” His face reddens. “Can you leave me there? So I can walk that other path?”
“You want to change the Past?”
He nods. “But only if Andrea and the kids don’t get hurt.”
“You’ll never meet Andrea if you walk that other Path. Your children will never be born.”
“What do you mean they’ll never be born. I drove them to school this morning on my way here.”
I shake my head. “You change the past, you change everything that happens since that change to the past. You stay with – “
“Brian.”
“Thank you. Brian. You never meet Andrea. You never have children.”
He looks at our fireplace, clean but cold, unused in the summer. “Can you show me what is on that Path? Just show me, not put me there?”
“What you ask is dangerous. Depending on the energies involved, depending on the energies unleashed, especially if they’ve been waiting to escape some kind of prison – “
He frowns at me.
” – you could return to a different place entirely.”
“Is it cold in here?”
I hand him the blanket and describe piggybacking. “You’ll feel something. Relax. Have you ever scubaed?”
He shakes his head. “Not in years. On a vacation once. In Hawaii.”
“Remember the sense of rising to the surface? Buoyancy without moving? It’ll be a little like that.”
“What should I do?”
“Hold on. You’ll feel like you’re riding something. Moving. It’s important to keep looking forward. Understand?”
He holds his hand up. There’s a white line where his wedding band rested. “Wait.”
“Yes?”
“We’ll come back to here, now, right?”
“I will. I can’t guarantee for you.”
“But that’ll mean we never met, you never did any of this.”
I gaze to someplace other, focus my attention there. “Correct.”
“You’re looking down that other path, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
He inhales deeply, closes his eyes, exhales. “Can you tell me what you see?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I will share it with you.” I ask the Edward-other if I can borrow him. He is grateful for my presence. “On one condition.”
I agree.
“Please do.” I take the Edward-Other’s four-bodies and place them on this Edward. They fit like loose clothing.
“You and Brian grow well together. You are accepted to graduate school at Boston University, he at Brandeis.”
This Edward snorts. “Another reason my family wouldn’t approve.”
“You study and grow. He takes a job as academic counselor at MIT. You volunteer and become a staff member at…Interface? That’s what it’s called. A kind of alternative health/spirituality center.”
He sits back. “I use to be into that stuff.”
“You learn Brian has AIDS, that he’s been unfaithful, but you don’t leave. Instead you make plans to move to Hawaii. They are more open to alternative relationships and their needs there. Hospice care is readily available.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“You stay with him, nurse him, care for him, won’t leave him the last days of his life.”
This Edward gently weeps.
“Six months after he passes, you discover you have AIDS. There are new medications, better possible outcomes. You refuse. Your family won’t talk to you, all your friends are there, you want to be with Brian, exploring the indigenous flowers. It became a hobby.”
“He always knew their names.”
“You died alone, but happy.”
Edward cries openly, sobs into the blanket. “Thank you.”
I gather the Edward-Other’s bodies, hold them close, dear, until my work with this Edward is done.
He repeats. “Thank you.” He stands, removes the blanket from his shoulders. “I don’t want to go back. I love my wife and children too much. But I will tell them the truth, let things fall where they may.”
“Good choice.”
He looks up at me. “Huh?”
“You’re deciding to move forward, not back, and taking responsibility for what’s been done, for your life as it is. Good work, that. You’re demonstrating that you respect others while respecting yourself. A rare quality. At least not one I encounter often.”
He takes a handkerchief out of his back pocket and dries his eyes. “Thanks. I guess.”
I rise and shake his hand. “Should you ever want to study, learn what I do, let me know. I’d be honored to work with you.”
***
I carry Edward-Other’s Four-Bodies back to Hawaii, to his cottage on the north of the big island, back in the trees aways and still able to smell and hear the waves on the ocean.
“You came back.”
I remember. “I keep my agreements. I do what I promise.”
“I met one like you, at Interface.”
“Yes.”
“Do you do DeathSongs?”
“Yes.”
“Please?”
I begin.
One by one, his four bodies depart.
The last one turns as it takes flight.
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
