Judy dropped Elliot off at Logan airport yesterday, and he landed in Paris. He’s going to stay for the next two months, driving out to Lucerne when he can in order to plan things out. He’ll make sure that he’s in Paris enough that it seems completely disconnected, and that there will be no hard evidence that he was ever in Lucerne.
I will be holding off another few weeks before going to Rome. Even though I’m financially ok, I don’t want to burn my day job at Market Basket. It’s been a good way for me to keep in touch with my father. Well… it had been. He left Coke, and so I’m not seeing him that way anymore, but Melanie and my mother have been getting closer, and so we’ve been able to see them a bit.
My grandmother told me last week that my mother likes Melanie, but isn’t sure that I’m a good husband. My grandmother laughed as she told me. Apparently my mother sees my absence, and cannot understand what it has been that I’m doing when I’m off doing something and it’s not at Market Basket.
My grandmother knows that Elliot and I are working toward something related to a scientist who we need help from. She also knows that there is a lot that I cannot tell her or Melanie, but my mother doesn’t. She probably thinks I’m cheating on Melanie. My grandmother has just told her that she has a good feeling about me. It’s been enough for the moment to keep my mother at ease about me.
I’m thinking that maybe bringing Melanie with me to Rome is a good idea. She could be a good alibi for me, and it may keep my mother from wondering why I would go to Rome for ten days without my wife.
The Judy and baby Elliot situation has not been reassuring to her. Melanie knows that Judy helped me connect with a forger who gave me a new identity, and that we struck up a friendship. But from my mother’s perspective, this odd guy who disappears from time to time, and looks like a heavy older brother to her husband is left a black baby by a white woman who has no other people in the world, and was on trial for murder. It’s a lot for her.
The other down side is that there hasn’t been much excuse for me to hang out with my dad. My mom is pretty social, with Melanie, even when she’s met Judy a couple of times, but my dad seems to like me but isn’t at all social. He’s friendly when we’re in a place together, but he has no desire to attend ball games, or parties. He hasn’t had a drink in almost a year— I only know that because growing up he said the last time he drank was his honeymoon. There aren’t even any social things I could ‘accidentally’ show up at.
My grandmother is trying to help on that front. She invited me and Melanie over to her sister’s for Father’s Day. My great-aunt hosted a Father’s Day cook out every year until she and her husband moved down to Florida. Getting to go is another sliver of normalcy into my life, even if I’ll be pretending that they’re not my family. She’s also assured me that my dad will be in attendance.
My great grandfather will be there, for his eightieth birthday. I’ve seen him once since I came back, and it’s a bit odd. He always seemed so old when I was a kid, but then when I saw him a couple of years ago, he looked just as old. He was just in his seventies then. When he died, I was almost 16, and he was about a month shy of 97. And yet, he looks exactly the same age.
I really loved him a lot as a kid, and I hadn’t really thought about getting to see him again when I came back.
I think perhaps I’ll tell him that I did track in high school, and lettered. He loves track. When I told him in seventh or eighth grade that I was doing track, he was so happy. He died before I did it my senior year.
I’ve been getting very emotional lately, and when I ask Elliot if he thinks it’s because of the proximity to my own double existence, he assured me that it wasn’t. He said he had no such temporal displacement issues when his baby self was nearing creation. He thinks it’s because I know what is coming over the next year, as well as the next twenty five. I have less than a year left with my grandmother, and while I haven’t really connected with any of my great grandparents in this time, two of them have about a year left, and the others will start to deteriorate.
It’s an inevitability of life, but Elliot has convinced me that the average person has some ability to deny that, whereas he and I know too much to let it slip our minds. I’m going to try to enjoy the next nine months and make the most of the time I have with my grandmother, but I feel like an open nerve.
Michael Christopher Cole 
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