I never met Jill, so we never had a daughter.
What, then, had I become?
I searched my apartment. It already felt familiar. I knew where everything was even before finding it — not that there was much to find. Pay stubs from a place called the Rigel Company. What did I — I was a mailroom clerk there. Jesus, I already felt a pang of the job’s drudgery.
In my old life (I’m calling it “my old life” already?) I was an accountant at a software company. Not the best, but it paid well. A lot better than a mail clerk position. Jill was the one who got me out of the world of dead-end jobs, encouraging me to finish my college degree, to give myself some credit.
Jill—
But here in the trash and piled up next to it were empty pizza boxes, empty cans of tuna and Campbell’s soup and three empty bottles of Jim Beam. God, how long had it been since I’d had a drink? In this new life, apparently not long. Already I felt my tongue slide across my lips in anticipation of a bourbon and Coke.
This wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right. But—
Something caught my eye. A stack of compact discs piled next to a portable CD player. Within that pile were six post-1980 John Lennon CD’s.
I forgot about my loss, my newfound poverty, and picked out a CD.
On the cover was a picture of John and Yoko walking through Central Park with a seven year old Sean. I slid a disc into the CD player and pressed play.
Strangely enough, the songs were familiar, like old friends, already stored in my new set of memories. And just like John’s pre-1980 songs, these cut to the bone. He sang with such raw emotion and power, I wondered how he was able to keep from breaking down during each take. It was amazing. Tears dripped from my eyes in a slow, gentle rain.
Listen—
Music bypasses the skin, the muscle, the bone and travels directly to the heart and mind. It amplifies our feelings and reminds us of our soul. Music, like nothing else, spreads our humanity from person to person like the shockwave of a nuclear bomb.
I spent the rest of the night listening to his CD’s, not eating, not sleeping, only stumbling from a worn-out beanbag chair to use the bathroom.
But also — I was afraid. Tremors ran through my body like a colony of ants. Here was the voice of a dead man. A man I’d resurrected.
And I found myself longing.
Longing for Jill.
Longing for Brianna. My daughter. By saving John Lennon’s life, I had snuffed my daughter out of existence.
I found a bottle of Jim Beam. I held it up to the light. The seal was broken and a third of the contents was gone. I stared at it as if I was staring at a shiny bauble. The label blurred. I tilted the bottle to my lips and drank.
Later, I curled up into a corner, shivering with fever, John’s music playing, filling the room with the sound of a modern-day Lazarus. At times, it wrapped around me like a warm blanket. At other times, it unsettled so much that I pressed my thumbs into my temples to keep my head from exploding.
How could the joy of changing the world be so fleeting? I felt empty, I felt like I’d been hung by my ankles over a rocky abyss. One day in this new world and my life was already unbearable. Was this the price I had to pay? And to whom was I paying it? No one would ever know what I’d done.
And what was the reward?
The CD player stopped. I popped in another disc and pressed play.
The music.
The music was my reward.
The next morning, my head throbbing, the taste of rot in my mouth, I searched for Jill. What had become of her? In this new world, we’d never met, yet why did I still remember her? Why did I remember Bree? Why didn’t my old memories get washed away the moment I saved John’s life? The memories were painful, a curse. How could my daughter weigh so heavily in my mind when she was a mere dream, a fragment of shadow from some other life?
I couldn’t find Jill in the phonebook. Perhaps she had married. I called her parents. I told her mother I was an old high school friend.
“Oh, I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.” Her mother sounded as I’d remembered her, always cordial, always in the middle of a cigarette.
I choked out the words — “Is Jill — is she married?”
Her mother laughed. “Five years. They just celebrated their anniversary in Bermuda.” She exhaled and I could almost smell the smoke through the receiver. “I offered to tag along and take care of Danny, but they said they’d manage.”
“Danny?”
“Their son.”
A son.
I cleared my throat. “Thanks. I’ll give her a call.” I hung up. My stomach lurched.
I vomited. I cried. An hour went by before I had the will to clean up the slick mess.
And all the while, I listened to his music.
At least there was that.
He still sang about love. About peace. About the frailty of men and women, their vulnerabilities and weaknesses. He sang about the strength of the heart. The resiliency of the soul. Mostly, he sang about you and me and how the world is a crazy, strange place, and how we should embrace it for what it is. We should love each other for who we are.
Yet there I sat, with the people I cared about, the ones closest to me, wiped from existence, like chalk from a board of slate. And John’s songs, old and new, told me that this is not right. They told me that in my attempt to save the world by bringing him back, I destroyed my own world.
The phone rang, but I didn’t answer. I unplugged it from the wall. I grew hungry, and I welcomed the hunger as punishment for what I’d done. I listened to his music, listened to it all, the old and the new. I listened to it over and over, rocking on my knees, leaning over the kitchen sink with eyes closed, swaying, swooning, drinking in his music and letting it fill the deepening fissures of my psyche. Twice, I held a razor blade over my wrist. I took off my clothes. I poured bourbon over my head, letting it rain over my face and sting my eyes. I screamed. I cursed myself until my voice gave out.
I listened. I danced.
Though my voice was broken, I mouthed the words in a rasp.
Other tenants pounded on the walls, but I ignored them. I rolled on the floor and cried and hit the refrigerator with my fists until I lost all the feeling in my hands.
And then I made a decision. I knew what I had to do. I knew how to make things right.
I lay on my back on the floor with an old Army surplus blanket rolled beneath my head. I cleared my mind. Prayed I had the strength. The strength to travel far enough, long enough. The strength to make things right.
There’s a famous picture of John taken by Bob Gruen in 1974. In it, John stands at the base of the Statue of Liberty giving the peace sign. He looks so human in that photograph, like he could be your brother or friend, and just looking at that, to think that this man, this very man I’m looking at, was shot — not once, but four times — the hollow point bullets merciless as they devoured him…
It made me ill.
I had a postcard of this photograph in the apartment, and I stared at it, no longer feeling hunger, no longer feeling pain. My tears had long since dried up, and all I could do was croak out the words, “I’m sorry.”
I traveled.
Words, printed words, appear, come into focus, and at first I’m afraid I failed, I grabbed hold of the wrong thread, the wrong hook. But as my eyes skim the words, I recognize the sentences, recognize the voice in the words. Holden Caulfield. The Catcher in the Rye. Mark David Chapman’s eyes, the same eyes I see through, devour the text like holy scripture.