I looked at my grandpop.
“Like you?”
“I haven’t been sleeping this whole time. I’ve been walking.”
“Walking where?”
“Just walking. Never mind that. You wanted to hear this whole thing, fine. I understand. And you know, it’s probably a good thing someone else knows, in case I’m not able to fix things. But for now, really, Mickey, I want you to shut up and let me tell this the way I want to tell it before I strangle you with my pee tube.
“Okay, Grandpop.”
“So I started working there and learned that this little bastard’s kept at the Papiro Center. Nobody was allowed in except DeMeo and his own cleaning staff, twenty-four/seven lockdown. The cleaning staff was allowed on the grounds, you know, to cut the grass and sweep up, but we were never allowed in the building. I spent years trying to get into that building. They had their own cleaning people. Bused in from somewhere else, I don’t know where. So it became a matter of stealing some keys. I figured I’d hang on to the job long enough to steal some keys and get myself into that building and grab a pillow and push it down over his face until he stopped breathing. Or maybe I’d bring a steak knife with me. Stab the bastard, just like he stabbed your father. Watch the hot blood splatter against his face as he looked into mine. Then I wouldn’t care what the cops did to me. They could throw me in a cell, do whatever the hell they wanted. But I never got in. Instead, I was reading the paper one day when I saw that DeMeo had been found, knifed in the back and in the head. I thought maybe that creepy little bastard had gotten loose, killed his own doctor, was ready to go on a rampage. But no. According to the patient logs, Billy was still in lockdown. He hadn’t moved. He’d been strapped to his bed. I couldn’t figure it out. It made no sense. When DeMeo bought it, I dug up his personnel file and found another address—the place on Frankford Avenue. I didn’t think I had much time, so I broke in, figuring I’d get a few hours, maybe a day before they clear out all of this stuff. I start looking through his papers, none of it makes a damn bit of sense. I stay there that one night, just to give me a little time to look around, and then I end up staying the next night. Nobody ever shows. So I end up staying there for good. The mushin running the store downstairs was paying his rent to DeMeo in cash, sticking it in his mailbox, so I took the money and paid the bills with it. I spent my time looking through his papers. And then I started reading about his pills. Crazy horseshit, I know, but there was a ton about them. How he thought they could give people out-of-body experiences. He never had much luck. They didn’t work on very many people. And half of those people didn’t even have real out-of-body experiences. They said they were back in some other time only they were invisible. So I found his stash of pills in the medicine cabinet and took one, just to see what the fuss was about. Only later did I put it all together. Of course DeMeo had no idea. His patients there started describing stuff from twenty, thirty, forty years in the past, and he thought they were making it all up. But I knew. I knew the very first time I took those things. Because I took one and I went into the past. I saw things I never thought I’d see again. The Starr Café, right there on the corner of Margaret and Frankford. It closed when I was a kid, but suddenly there I was looking in the front window. I couldn’t believe it. So I took more pills and started walking around more. I learned quick that I could only walk at night. You discovered the same thing yourself, I see. But the nights were long, and there was so much I wanted to see. I walked down to the river and saw the Delaware River Bridge, almost finished. They opened it the year I was born—1926. They call it the Ben Franklin Bridge now, but it was the Delaware River Bridge then, and it was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen. I saw my father and my mother down on Second Street. You never met my father, because he died when I was just a kid. I hadn’t laid eyes on him for seventy some years. I was a ghost but I didn’t care. I was seeing everything I’d missed.”
“I know what you mean.”
“You went back to your birth year, too, didn’t you? I don’t know why that is. The pills only do that to very, very few people—I read DeMeo’s reports. But I guess that’s how our brains were built. We take these pills, we go back. And when I saw my father, and myself as a baby, I started thinking of your father. Thinking maybe it wasn’t too late. Thinking maybe I could do something to fix things. I couldn’t do a thing about Billy Derace. He wouldn’t be born for another twenty-four years. But I could find his father. I could find his father and do something about him.”
“You never found him, though.”
“Victor Derace didn’t exist back then. It’s like he was a ghost.”
“Billy’s mom told me he changed his name a lot. But he was born Victor D’Arrazzio.”
My grandpop stopped and looked at me. Really looked at me. His jaw opened a little, and then he moistened his lips and looked over at his right hand, which was clutching the blanket.
“D’Arrazzio.”
“Yeah.”
“Spell it.”
I did the best I could, but Erna hadn’t spelled it for me either.
Grandpop didn’t say anything for a while, and when he spoke, he was mostly muttering to himself.
“So it’s not too late.”
The whole time grandpop was speaking—and it was just like the old family holidays, Mickey sit down and shut up, Mickey go get your grandfather another warm beer—I took everything in. But with each new piece, I thought of my father. He’d taken the pills, too.
And the more I stared at Grandpop, and at his thin, mangled fingers from years of manual labor, taped up with IV tubes, I started to realize what else had happened.
The story didn’t begin with Billy Allan Derace attacking my father at random in December 1980. The story also began with my father taking those pills in 1972 and being thrown back into his own past. I remembered what my mom had told me, about what my dad had said not long after I was born.
Why he wouldn’t speak to my grandfather.
Why he hated him.
And quite possibly why he’d been so distant with me.
He didn’t know how to be with me.
All he knew was what his father had taught him.
I touched grandpop’s hand. It was cold and dry. He snapped out of his reverie and looked up at me.
“What?”
“Did my dad ever talk to you about those experiments when he was alive?”
“No. We didn’t talk much then. I didn’t know how to talk to him. He didn’t seem to want to talk to me either.”
“Did you ever wonder why?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You went back to 1926—the year you were born. I went back to 1972—the year I was born. So when my dad went back to 1949, what did he see?”
“How the hell would I know?”
“You would know because you were there. You were there in 1949, not long after my dad was born, and you were smacking Grandmom around with a belt.”
His eyes bulged—I caught him by surprise. Then they narrowed into hot angry slits.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No, I do, and you’re going to listen to me now. Don’t you realize that dad took those pills, too? He probably went back and did the same things you and I did. He went home. But what did he see? Well, I guess he saw how you really were. Smacking Grandmom around.”
“You don’t understand a goddammed thing. You don’t have any kids.”
“Yeah, and with shining examples like you and my dad, why the hell would I? Raise them, hold them, cuddle them, just so I can turn around and start beating them on the ass with a leather belt? Beat them until the backs of their legs are black and blue, and thank God it’s still long pants weather so no one at school will see?”