What Would Time Know?

He walks up to her door. Or at least he thinks he does, because really all the doors look alike, all the units lined up amidst blooming gardens and laden trellises; each one with its neatly tiled roof, and its pale-cream painted timber, and the reddish shade around the window-sills and along each identical porch.

He thinks he remembers: number 22.

He thinks he remembers what he had for dinner last night, but the memory isn’t a sure thing, it’s a slippery little bugger. Well, they all are these days.

And so maybe he’ll end up at the wrong door, maybe at old Badger Cokock’s place, having to explain why he’s standing there with a great big bunch of flowers and stupid look on his face. “Three doors down,” Badger would say with that look of you’ve-got-to-be-kidding in his eyes. That look of when-the-hell-is-Robb-Baker-going-to-give-it-up-and-start-acting-his-age?

Well, eighty-six is a lot of age to act. It’s a lot of years. And those years just keep hurtling under the bridge, more so these days, more so each year, as if time is in flood. And before he knows it the lake’ll dry up and the years won’t keep thundering past him anymore.

And so, that’s what he’s doing, walking up to her door, on a bright Tuesday morning, flowers in hand, at the age of eighty-six. His body feels the years, his knees feel it, and his back, his shoulders, his neck, his stiff fingers; but his heart is pounding in his chest like a teenager’s. Like he’s never done this before or something.

He rings the doorbell. He stands, helpless and trapped – what’s he going to do now if he changes his mind? Yell “ding-dong-ditch” and run away? Leaning on his walking stick and having to pause for breath with every five paces? No, he’s in it for the long haul, made his bed and all that. Time would just have to tell, and God knows he’s awash in time, he’s had time up to his eyeballs and then some.

“What would time know?” his mother used to say. And he still doesn’t know what that means. Except sometimes, late at night, or at the absolute red-violet cusp of twilight, he thinks that he almost hair’s-breadth feels it, almost knows. And now at this moment, waiting for Edie Logan to answer her doorbell.

Footsteps in the hallway.

What? You’re a foolish old man and Badger Cokock would have the right of it to tell you to grow up and act your- “Edie.”

“Robb Baker.”

She’s a vison. Oh, she is. And it’s not just some old man’s sentimental mawkishness. Even with those eight full decades draped across her soul, there is still a fire beneath her skin, there’s still a flapping, hungry soul in there. A girl of twenty. A woman of not-quite-thirty.

But he goes back even further: “I remember us when we were five.”

“Do you now?”

“I don’t always remember my middle name, but that night, I remember it.”

“Do tell, then.”

“My parents went over to your parents place. Some work do, or other. And I didn’t want to go, I thought I’d be bored, or picked on, or asked stupid questions, or some combination of all that. I was a lonely little thing. And so were you. And I found you out the back amongst the trees, looking up into the branches.”

“At that treehouse.”

“That’s right. And you said you had no idea who built it, even though it was in your garden, that it was some strange child from some time long ago, and how they must be a grown-up now and forgot all about it.”

“You were the one who said we should climb up. The one who got us stuck, until we were both bawling our eyes out for rescue. If I remember things a-right.”

“I told you I wasn’t scared that day.”

“Huh! You were lying. Even a five-year-old knew it.”

“So I won’t say the same thing today.”

“Scared of what?”

“Of never being able to undo that moment.”

“What moment?”

“When I saw you sitting beneath that tree and I thought you were beautiful, but I didn’t dare say so out loud.”

She looks at the flowers, “Are those for me?”

“Yes.”

She gestures towards the neat green door behind her, “Well, maybe you’d like to come inside for a cup of coffee?”

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work