out of office

(part 1)

The doctors told me it was in my best interest to get out of town. To establish a new timeline, they said, away from the volatility of your current reality. Like everything else they’d told me, this was both confusing and alarming. Impermanent alternate selves this, and arrhythmic temporality that; I was really beginning to feel that they were making it all up as they went along, in some twisted game of medical improv—although, as Dr. Krykewycz was ever eager to remind me, he was technically not a medical doctor, and thus shouldn’t be held to the same legal or ethical standards.

Dr. Krykewycz, an hour’s commute across town, was very busy and impatient and frowningly concerned about my condition, always peering at me seriously from under a heavy brow like I was an uncooperative microscope slide. His lab team had run a series of tests on me which mostly entailed getting slathered in cold, gelatinous substances and lying down inside loud machines. And in the end he agreed that I should see to moving away as quickly as possible. He told me this while I sat in his office, scribbling away in the notebook I’d taken to carrying with me. At this point, most of its pages were filled up with terms I didn’t understand.

“Your condition,” he was saying, gesturing meaningfully and complicatedly at all the high-tech scans they’d taken, “has been transmitted across various instances in your timeline, creating a series of breaks from what we colloquially refer to as reality. In other words, your current, material body is not the only one that’s been affected. There are, probably, as we speak, several versions of yourself, of varying ages, popping in and out of our present moment.”

“Several versions…” I muttered to myself, taking notes, “…in and out of the present… Oh, gosh.”

“Probably, but perhaps not. This is all still very new, you understand.”

“Probably,” I amended, underlining the addendum twice.

“And the presence of these other material bodies could pose a danger to your existence,” he went on. “We have no real way of knowing.”

“Danger to my…” I paused my note-taking and glanced up. He was frowning at me thoughtfully.

“What I mean to say,” Dr. Krykewycz said, “is that interacting with those other selves may kill you.”

“Oh.” I said politely. “What?”

“You should do your best,” he said gravely, “to avoid crossing paths with them. How often have you relocated in the past few decades?”

“Never—I’ve always lived here,” I said. “What?”

⧗

We were always grappling, time and I, so it made a sick kind of poetic sense that it was what would get me in the end. A few of my friends actually laughed when I told them.

“I thought you were going to say brain tumor,” Helen said, “or Alzheimer’s. But of course, Cece. Of course it would be a time thing.”

And, well, yeah. Of course. I, who disagrees with time like it's some sort of untruth— who's forever fifteen minutes late because I can't quite wrap my head around when to get going— who so often wakes up confused about when and where I am. Of course I would be one of the first freak cases of a goddamn time disorder.

So I packed up my life, and I sent out resumes to all the places I was least likely to go.

⧗

The town was called Kettle, and they had a modest university campus with a nice library which took me on right away. I suspected no one else had wanted to move out there for the posting—there is something sort of uninspiring about a place named after a utilitarian object. According to the town’s very perfunctory Wikipedia page, it had once been called Copper Springs, but the locals elected to rename it in 1928. It would appear that the name had been enticing too many vacationers; the people of Kettle value their quiet.

The Kettle Campus Library was like my condition in that nobody had yet seen fit to give it a proper name. It was dusty and underused, so I felt I fit in quite nicely. My supervisors were much more forgiving of a time-addled reference librarian than my old work had been; I think, for them, my symptoms evoked a certain down-home charm, making me come across as even more eccentric than I already was. But I sank easily into the role. I traded in my metropolitan statement jewelry for chunky turtlenecks; I wore Birkenstocks and a lot of hemp. 

I rented a guest house from a woman named Maggie, and I found a small Internet forum for people living with time sickness. The meditation routines my online peers suggested seemed to quell the spontaneous time hopping, and away from the bustle of the city, I learned to cope much better when it did occur. Having to relive the same day twice wasn't so bad in a sleepy town. Likewise, learning that I'd skipped forward a day or two felt less consequential when my coworkers didn't even notice.

There were three things I grew to love in Kettle: Maggie, Maggie’s garden, and the library. Maggie for her hardiness; the garden for the same; and the library out of habitude, the way you might learn to care for a particular mole on your arm. It clear to me that the library was a place that had once been beautiful, so full of faded midcentury promise. I loved the rows and rows of stodgy academic books that nobody had touched in years. I loved the browning, crumbled glue on their battered spines. The doctors had advised me to stay on the move, not to settle for too long, but I thought, who would ever think to look for me here?

Three peaceful years passed this way before I was found.

⧗

It’s a bright and drowsy March morning. The library is a long, low Prairie-style building, and this particular wing, my favourite, has broad and slanted beams that cut up the light from the high-set windows. It makes a kind of rhythm when you push a book cart through the puddles of light. Bright-dark, bright-dark, stirring up the lazy dust motes drifting in the sun. Someone in some decade past installed a hideous burgundy rug, and it dampens the sounds of footsteps and turning pages.

On early weekday mornings I usually have the place to myself. I like it that way; I like the stillness and the sameness of the stacks. I’m a steward of the dust and the pulp.

I’ve finished shelving and am wandering back through the aisles when I see her. Slouching and covert, she’s pretending to browse the books—in the Microbiology section of all places. Who does she think she’s kidding?

I turn on my heel and hurry away, cart forgotten, getting purposefully lost in the rows and rows of shelves, but she comes around a corner and traps me in Colonial American Literature.

“Hey,” she says, in a tone that suggests I’m a friend she’s run into unexpectedly, and not someone she’s stalked across the country.

I say, “You're not supposed to be here.”

She makes a kind of snorting sound. I don’t remember doing that, ever. And then she’s shoving a takeout coffee cup into my hand. I glance at the Sharpie scrawl on the side; at least she got my order right.

“Well,” she says, “I’m here. Walk with me?”

Whoa, I think, Is that really what my voice sounds like?

I glance around at the empty stacks and start to pace toward the exit, with her keeping pace. “I can walk you to the door. And then you really should go.”

“Nice to see you too.” She smirks into her drink. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy. We have some serious business to take care of.”

She looks so young; I can’t figure out how old she is. Nineteen? Twenty-two? What age was I when I got really into bomber jackets and combat boots? She holds my gaze, chin raised confidently, while I stare. I nearly run into a bookshelf. When I’ve righted myself, she gives me a once-over of her own, her gaze lingering reluctantly on my chunky brown clogs.

“Get your things,” she says. “We’re taking a drive.”

Well, I think, it was a good run. I obediently stop by the office to grab my coat and purse. When we pass the circulation desk, I give the assistant a nervous wave. I hope it conveys Just stepping out! Be right back! although I’m pretty sure that would be a lie.

Before I can push the front door open, she puts a hand over mine to stop me.

“Cecilia,” she says, very seriously—which I guess is supposed to be, like, an inside joke, because she must know how much I hate being called that. So, great. Now I’m being bullied by my younger self—“Cecilia,” she says, “what the hell are you doing in Nowhereville, Manitoba?”

I shrug, defensive. “It’s remote.”

“No shit. It took forever to track you down.” She shoves the door open then, momentarily blinding us with winter sun, and starts walking out into the parking lot, assuming I’ll follow her—I do. “What are you hiding from out here?”

“Well,” I say, “from you.”

She looks nothing like me, I think. Her hair is cropped short and choppy, and coloured splotchy orange-yellow in what looks to be a home-brewed bleach job. I definitely never did that to my hair.

“Nah,” she agrees when I tell her as much, “but you sure did think about it a lot.”

“Hang on.” We’ve reached the car. I place a flat hand on the low roof. It’s solid and mid-March frosty. “Wait. This isn’t some kind of Christmas Carol thing, is it? Because if it is…” I trail off, because I don’t know what I’d do, forced to face the future I’m currently on track for.

She gives me a stern look over the top of the car; a Librarian Look, Maggie calls it. “If it were,” she points out, “you’d be the ghost. Not me.”

Ouch. I thumb the car unlocked and it yelps between us.

“Think it’d be best if we took mine, actually,” she says, jerking her chin across the lot to a gaudy orange sportscar that doesn’t even have the decency to match her hair.

“Good gosh,” I say. I still haven’t taken my hand off the roof. It might be a bit frozen on. “Well, afterwards, can you drop me back here? I have to get the car back to Maggie.”

“Who’s Maggie?” She’s already taken a few steps away. “Your girlfriend?”

I peel my palm off the car. “Landlord.”

She turns to give me a look I understand in my gut. It’s a look that doesn’t need words. It says: There’s not going to be an afterwards, Cece. I’m taking you far away. 

“There’s not going to be an afterwards, Cece,” she says once I’m safely buckled into her tangerine crime against civilized motor travel. “I’m taking you far away.”

I roll my eyes. Is that really what I sound like out loud?

“Do I at least get a last meal?” I ask. She snorts again. Okay, I’ve definitely never done that. She starts the car up and begins to pull out of the lot; I give a last, long look to the Kettle Campus Library. Goodbye, I think. I loved you.

⧗

I’d always wanted to move out of the city, when I was younger. It hadn’t felt very glamorous to do it while running for my life at forty-six.

The doctors had no real explanation for their wariness of my past selves. Time sickness has effects on the mind and body that we don’t yet understand, Dr. Krykewycz had said. He theorized that their proximity would create some sort of instability in my brain function, or throw my temporality into complete chaos; he had all kinds of theories. I’d always assumed that maybe my past selves would actually just kill me out of sheer rage at the boring life I’d trapped them in. After all, I was the oldest of us all; it was my fault we’d never traveled, never left home, hardly ever dated. I’d never even tried oysters.

So there really hadn’t been much holding me down, despite nearly five decades of living in the city. It had almost been a relief, to be finally forced out of the place.

When I packed up the condo, inherited from my stepdad, I found a crumpled-up calendar from 2001. The theme was World's Most Beautiful Destinations. On all the months’ pages—April, Capri; September, Machu Picchu—a 23-year-old Cece had scrawled in Sharpie: Yes! Love! Must-see! Like she was making a grocery list of beautiful things to fill her life with.

She would never believe that the furthest I'd ever make it was Kettle, Manitoba. I wonder if anyone sells calendars for that.

⧗

Cece is futzing with the car radio. There aren’t many stations out here, but she nobly cranks through the same six signals over and over again as if something new will manifest, only letting up to sip her cooling coffee. She squints out over the snowy landscape as the sparse offerings of the town roll by. “Fuckin’ bleak,” she mutters to herself over staticky Guns N’ Roses.

“You're already killing me, you know,” I say. “You're actually killing me just by being here.”

She laughs. “No, I'm not. Who told you that?”

“The doctors.”

“What the fuck do they know? They're as in the dark as you are.”

“You shouldn't curse,” I say as a reflex. Outside, the town rolls by.


Cece makes us stop off at Maggie’s place (even after three years it’s still only ever Maggie’s place to me). She doesn’t tell me it’s to make my goodbyes; she doesn’t have to.

She pulls up with enough ruckus that the two border collies come tearing around the side of the house, barking out big white clouds, and Maggie follows shortly behind, eyebrows raised in a pair of questions.

I make the introductions and leave Cece to produce some explanation while I slink inside to gather up a few things. I don’t know what to pack. How much does a dying woman need to have on her? In the end, I change into softer, warmer clothes and throw a few changes into a knapsack. I pack the book I’ve almost finished reading, and my notebook, and a small river rock from a day out with the dogs last summer. I’m glad I’m leaving in the winter, when I can’t see the garden through my window—the way the sage and black-eyed Susans look in dappled shade.

Maggie is waiting by the front door. Her brown hair frizzes out in the dry cold, haloing her rugged face. Her mouth is angled in reproach. I’ve always thought she looks like she belongs in a cowboy movie. A wide shot against a big sky, squinting against the sun.

“I’m thinking if I weren’t here to catch you,” she says, “you would’ve left without saying goodbye.”

I feel very guilty with my pack slung over my shoulder. “Sorry.”

She flashes me a hard grin. “Eh. Always knew you were just passing though.”

She doesn’t seem too bothered when I press the car key into her palm and explain about it being parked on campus. The dogs are a frenzy around my ankles; I duck down to ruffle them up and kiss their velvet ears.

Cece’s waiting in the car. I start back down the drive.

“Give me a shout when you get to wherever you’re going,” Maggie says after me.

I can’t, I almost say, I’ll be dead. It seems like something they’d say in a cowboy movie. I give her a silent wave instead, and a last, long look.

⧗

As we pull away, Cece keeps glancing at the rearview mirror.

“You could have at least mentioned the fact that you love her,” she huffs.

I press my forehead to the chill of the window. “It’s not like that.”

“Yeah, right,” she says. “She’s a total MILF.”

“Shut up,” I say. “She’s not even anyone’s—shut up.”

Cece cranks the radio again. I close my eyes, and the sun through the trees flashes against my eyelids. Bright-dark, bright-dark.

I tune out the broken radio as my younger self drives me away to die.

---

This story will be continued in February’s love letter ♡


xo,

Emmali