The First Trip Backwards

Middletown, New Jersey

July 2000

You have to be quiet with the knife or it makes too much noise. Caleb pushes the tip into the cardboard; this part is easy. Sawing is hard and loud, but Caleb goes slow and now he can see Dad through the slit he has cut in the box.

This is the spy tower. He has stacked the boxes high enough that he can stand up all the way in this part of the fort. He should cut more slits so that he will be able to see all around the basement. He can see Dad in his spaceship cockpit, and that’s good for now, though.

“Don’t make any noise!” Oscar says. “It’s the basement.”

“Shhhh,” Caleb says.

“Is he mad? Don’t make him mad at us!”

“I won’t. Be quiet.”

“He’ll make me go away,” Oscar says. His voice is muffled. He has moved to another part of the fort.

Caleb crouches down carefully. He hasn’t taped the tower together all the way yet. It could fall, and then he’d be in trouble, because he’s supposed to be napping. He takes out his mini spy flashlight that looks like a regular pen and shines it around the fort. It’s daytime, but there’s a storm outside and the basement is very dark. In the flashlight beam, he sees lots of Styrofoam that he’s going to turn into control panels once he brings his markers down here. There are also a lot of cardboard pieces he’s cut and sawed still lying on the floor, but he likes them there. Crawling around on the concrete floor hurts his knees, but the cardboard pieces help. He sees lots of twist ties, plastic bags with writing on them, Bubble Wrap he’s saving for booby traps, and four instruction books for equipment his dad is setting up. But he doesn’t see Oscar anywhere.

Caleb crawls through the training room to the radar room with his flashlight in his teeth.

“Your mom is mad at him,” Oscar says from somewhere else.

Caleb checks the shelves he has built with cardboard flaps and tape. There are extra rolls of tape there—three clear ones and a fat roll of masking tape—but no Oscar.

“He got fired, and he doesn’t go out,” Oscar says. “That’s why she’s mad.”

Caleb crawls through a tunnel of plastic to the computer room. This is where he’ll use the Styrofoam to make control panels with knobs, switches, and buttons. He has a string of Christmas lights he’ll use to make the buttons blink, like all the ones in his dad’s cockpit.

“He dim’t ge-fired,” Caleb says, the flashlight back between his teeth. “He got waid off.”

“What is the difference?”

“It’s different.”

“You don’t know.”

“You ownt know!” Caleb stops on his way back through the plastic tunnel. He is afraid he said that too loud, but there is no noise except for the storm outside. His dad must have his headphones on. “You’re onwy ma-blieve. You ownt know ingthing.”

Oscar laughs. It sounds like he has a sore throat. Caleb thinks they have already said all this before.

Oscar is moving again, but when the flashlight catches him, he’s lying facedown on the ground under the spy tower. There’s something metal underneath him. Caleb takes the flashlight out of his mouth and rolls Oscar over.

“I’m not supposed to have that!” Caleb whispers. His arms feel cold. “I’ll get in trouble!”

“Can you feel the wind?” Oscar says.

Caleb picks up the harmonica and stands up in the spy tower. Dad is wearing his headphones, reading an instruction book, and turning knobs on a big, blinking control panel.

“Mike,” calls Mom from upstairs.

“Is this the end?” Oscar says.

Caleb looks at the harmonica in his hand. He’s supposed to be taking a nap, like his new sister. Oscar laughs, and Caleb can tell he has moved again.

###

Please don’t be down there. But she knows he is. There’s always just one quick thing he needs to do, one last bit of setup, construction, or reconfiguration, and then he’ll be done with the really time-consuming stuff.

Right.

But the worst part is how happy—how alive—he seems. Something is off, and it is driving her crazy. At night, her husband sneaks to the basement to build a recording studio, and she sneaks to her office to scour news groups for self-helpers, conspiracy theorists, and UFO enthusiasts, do Internet searches for “late-onset schizophrenia,” “basement possession,” “my husband lost his mind and lives in the basement now,” and a thousand other bits of insanity. Her own manuscript is a distant memory. Even the pang of guilt that used to accompany every opening of the laptop is gone. Why write a mystery novel when you are living in one?

She goes to the basement door, opens it, listens. “Mike?”

There is a rumble of thunder, and the overhead bulb flickers briefly. There’s blue light and a low hum coming from below. Jesus Christ, sounds like several million too many volts. No other sound.

He probably has his headphones on. He’d better have his headphones on. She resists an impulse to stomp down the stairs. Maybe there’s another way.

She goes to the half bath in the hallway, combs through her hair, straightens her T-shirt. She touches her stomach. Has it been long enough? Probably not. Shit. Seduction’s out.

She goes back to the basement door and opts for stealth. She’s halfway down when she hears his voice.

“Amy?”

Amy stops, like she got caught doing something, but he can’t have seen her yet.

“Amy? Did you hear that? Is somebody at the door?”

The door? Definitely nobody at the door. She decides to stay put, see where this goes.

“You didn’t hear the doorbell?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Just now. You didn’t hear it? I heard … I know I heard it. …”

Things are getting interesting; then Carrie starts crying upstairs.

###

Mike swivels on his stool, and his foot kicks something, sending it clattering loudly across the basement floor. It thuds against the cardboard fort Caleb’s been building. There are quiet noises on the stairs, but the bookshelves are between him and them. The basement door opens softly, closes softly.

Mike finds the shiny thing—it’s the Dylan harmonica—and it’s lying next to Caleb’s Book of Mysteries. Behind him, the equipment blinks, and the air in the basement pulses with electricity. He adjusts a microphone, presses buttons on a sound board, and blows a chord. The reeds inside the harmonica vibrate. He strums the guitar, and the strings vibrate. A key is struck, the wires in the piano vibrate, and they don’t stop. The reed of the saxophone vibrates, and the horn howls. The drumsticks strike the tom, then the high hat, and they vibrate, too. A thumb plucks the bass, and it resonates deep inside. And now everything is vibrating. When it stops, nothing is the same, except the doorbell, which is ringing again.