Promise Me

Clearly, there is more to heaven and Utah than is dreamt of in my philosophy.

Beth Cardall’s Diary

Matthew’s car wasn’t at his apartment, so I drove around the area looking for him. Around six o’clock I was driving back to his place to check again when I noticed his BMW, or at least one like it, parked at a sports bar just down the street from his apartment. I parked next to it and looked inside the car. I recognized his coat.

I walked inside the building and spotted him sitting alone in the corner sipping a drink. I took a deep breath, then walked up to him. “Hi.”

He looked up at me but didn’t smile. “Ciao.”

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“You said you never wanted to see me again.”

“Yeah, I did, didn’t I. May I join you?” He looked at me sadly, then gestured to the chair across from him. I pulled off my coat and sat down. “I’m very sorry.”

“So two million dollars can buy remorse?”

His words stung. “It’s not the money. I mean, it was. I was afraid I’d lost it all, but I was also afraid . . .” I hesitated. “That you didn’t really love me.”

“How could you doubt me?”

“After Marc, can you blame me for doubting?”

He took another drink, then looked at me. “No, I guess not. But you were right, the best thing would be for me to just go away and never come back.”

I stared at him, my eyes welling up in tears. “No, that wouldn’t be best. Please, give me another chance. I know I screwed up. But I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

“It’s not that, Beth.”

I looked at him, confused. “Then what is it?”

He stared at his drink for a moment then said, “You don’t really know who I am.”

“It doesn’t matter to me who you are. What I know of you is enough. I don’t even care if your name isn’t Matthew. I don’t care about your past. All I want is your future.”

“My name is Matthew,” he said softly. “But that’s the thing—my past does matter and my future is spoken for. In a way, they’re the same thing.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked down for a long time. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Believe what?” I touched his hand. “Matthew, I’ll believe you. Trust me.”

“You really want to know who I am?”

“I do.”

He groaned. “I’m a mistake, Beth. I’m a big, freaking cosmic mistake.” He rubbed his face. “I was never supposed to fall in love with you.”

“How can falling in love be a mistake?”

“Trust me, it can.” He rubbed his chin. His voice lowered. “You have no idea what’s really happening here. The best thing I could do for everyone is walk away and never come back. Especially for Charlotte.”

“Charlotte loves you.”

“Exactly.” He looked me in the eyes. “Beth, there are forces at work here you couldn’t possibly understand.”

My brow furrowed. “What kind of forces?”

“I honestly don’t know.” He looked at me for a long time, then I saw his demeanor relax in resignation. “All right, you want to know? Here you go. I told you that I don’t gamble. I don’t. I knew about the boxing match because I watched it.”

“A lot of people watched it.”

“I watched it eighteen years ago.”

“What?”

“Beth, this isn’t my time. I’m supposed to be ten years old, not twenty-seven.” He stared into my eyes then said flatly, “I came here from the future.”

“The future?”

“Two thousand eight, to be exact.”

For a moment I just stared at him, wondering what had gotten into him. “Why are you saying this?”

He shook his head. “I told you you wouldn’t believe me.” He lifted a glass and took a drink, his eyes never leaving me. “I’m not lying. How else would I know about the boxing match?”

“It could have been a lucky guess.”

“It could have been,” he said nodding, “but not likely. How did I know that Charlotte had celiac disease even though I had never seen her and all the doctors who examined her couldn’t diagnose her?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did I know that your real name is Bethany—Bethany Ann Curtis, or that you like sunflowers instead of roses or what you eat at your favorite restaurant?”

I just stared at him. I had no idea.

“How about this—you were born in Magna, Utah, and your father, Charles Donald Curtis, a volunteer fireman, left you when you were six. Your mother, Donna, is buried in Elysian Gardens and every Memorial Day you go to her grave and lay a lavender plant.”

“How are you doing this?”

“I’m not making this up, Beth. I’m not even good at this. I kept slipping up, like in the car when I said how much I like your granola when you’d never made it before. Or when you asked me what year I had graduated, what was I going to say? In nine more years? I told Jan that I had heard a lot about her even though you had never mentioned her. Do you want to know her future? I know her as Jan Klaus, a married women. She gets a big tattoo on her arm, marries a veterinarian and moves to Portland, where she has a boy named Ethan. She calls Charlotte almost every month.”

Just then the waitress came to our table. “Do you need anything else?”

“No, thank you,” Matthew said. He handed her a bill. “Keep the change.”

When she was gone, he continued. “I hadn’t heard of the Bee Gees, not because I was in Italy, but because I hadn’t been born yet. That song I was singing to you in the canyon, ‘Truly Madly Deeply,’ hasn’t been written yet. There is no Savage Garden group. That’s why I smiled when you said you were going to look for it.

“I can tell you every U.S. president for the next twenty years. I can tell you most of the Oscar best-picture winners, every Super Bowl winner. Every World Series winner. I can even tell you almost every American Idol winner.”

“What’s American Idol?”

“It’s a TV show. And in twelve years you’re going to be a big fan. The point is, I know the future because I’ve been there. I can tell you about world events. A year from now a war will start in Kuwait.”

“Kuwait?”

“It’s a little country in the Middle East with a lot of oil. Later this year they’ll be invaded by Iraq and next year the U.S. will go to war to liberate them. Operation Desert Shield. Of course the biggest news is that the Soviet Union falls apart.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Yeah, well so is Mike Tyson getting knocked out by a forty-two-to-one underdog. If history teaches us anything, it’s that anything is possible and the unlikely is likely. The changes I told you about have already begun.”

I looked down, struggling to process all he was saying.

“I know about your husband, Marc, and that you never told Charlotte that he cheated. I also know that he gave you a pearl necklace that you won’t wear. I’m guessing that’s because it was a sin offering.”

“How did you know that?”

“Because Charlotte knows it’s in your closet drawer and has always wondered why you wouldn’t wear it. I know that on the eve of Charlotte’s birthdays you come in at night after you think she’s sleeping and tell her how lucky you are that she came into your life and then you say goodbye to your baby girl.”

“Stop it,” I said.

“When Charlotte gets married, you give her the rose-gold locket that your mother gave you.”

I yelled, “Stop it!” I began to cry. “How are you doing this?”

He grabbed my arm. “I told you. I’m from your future. I can tell you things you don’t want to know. The dry cleaner burns down in six years. One of the workers, Bill or Phil, or whatever his name is, dies of a heart attack. Roxanne’s husband has a stroke.”

“Ray?”

He stared at me. “You don’t want to know what I know. I’ve already told you too much.”

I felt like I’d fallen down the rabbit hole. I lay my head in my hands. After a few moments I looked back up. “If you’re from the future, why are you so interested in me? Why not save the world.”

“Because it’s not mine to save. The world has its own destiny. I wasn’t sent here to change the world. Only yours.”

“Someone sent you?”

“I don’t know, someone, something. Who knows? Maybe it’s some cosmic committee. I’m here because I made Charlotte a promise.”

“You know Charlotte as an adult?”

He hesitated, his eyes carefully reading mine. “This is going to be hard for you.”

“What?”

He took a deep breath. “Beth, Charlotte is my wife.”

I stared at him. “What?”

He raked his hand back through his hair. “I made her a promise that I would take care of you.”

“But you told me your wife died.”

His expression turned grave. “I’ve told you too much.”

“What happens to Charlotte?”

“Don’t ask, Beth.”

“Tell me.”

After a moment he threw up his hands. “Nothing happens to Charlotte. Okay? Just forget all this. None of this is true. I’m just a lunatic you’ll never have to see again.”

“What happens to Charlotte?”

“Nothing.”

I grabbed him. “I need to know.”

“Some things are better not to know. You said so yourself.”

“I was wrong.”

He groaned and balanced his head on one hand, covering his eyes. A minute later he looked up. “She gets intestinal lymphoma from her celiac.”

My eyes welled up. “I don’t believe you. I don’t know how you’re doing this, but I don’t believe you.”

“Good,” he almost shouted. “Don’t.”

When I could speak, I said, “You’re my son-in-law?”

He didn’t answer. “Supposing that what you’ve told me is true, how did you get here?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea. It was 2008, just three days before Christmas. Charlotte and I had been to the oncologist to discuss the results of her last round of chemo and radiation. We were hopeful that she was in remission, but we were dead wrong. The doctor said that the cancer had spread and that now we’d have to resort to unconventional methods.

“It was the worst day of my life. Charlotte collapsed at the doctor’s office. I think it was the last straw. After all she’d been through, she finally just gave up. That afternoon you called to check on her and she made me lie to you. She didn’t want to ruin your Christmas. But she stayed in bed after that.

“Then, on Christmas Eve, Charlotte and I were supposed to go to your house for a dinner party, but Charlotte couldn’t get out of bed. She had me call to tell you that we wouldn’t be making it but we’d see you in the morning for breakfast.”

I began to cry.

“It was around eight that I climbed in bed next to her and started giving her a massage to help her sleep. I knew she was bad off, I just didn’t want to believe how bad. She started talking about you. She said that you had lost everyone you had ever loved and that you had given your entire life for her. She was upset that she had let you down.”

I dabbed my eyes with the napkin. “She never let me down.”

“She said, ‘When I’m gone, promise me that you’ll take care of her.’ I told her, ‘You’re not going anywhere,’ but she shook her head. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Promise me.’

“I promised her I would, then she fell asleep. I just lay there next to her, terrified of losing her, wondering if I should call someone, praying for her life.” He took a deep breath. “Wondering if it was time for her to die.” He slowly shook his head. “That’s the last thing I remember. That’s the last time I saw her.

“The next thing I remember was waking up to a scream. I looked up to see this strange woman standing in our room wearing a robe and screaming at the top of her lungs. Then this guy runs in with a baseball bat. He yells, ‘What are you doing in our apartment?’ I said, ‘What are you doing in my apartment?’ I’m looking around for Charlotte but she wasn’t there. In fact, nothing looked right. Charlotte was gone. The room was different. The pictures we had on the walls were gone. The walls themselves were different—they were wood paneling. The guy with the baseball bat asked if I was drunk. I honestly wasn’t sure. Nothing made sense. He said to me, ‘You wandered into the wrong apartment—now get out before we call the police.’

“I was in no position to argue. I stood up and walked backwards to the door. When I got outside, the weather had changed. There was a huge blizzard. I had no coat, no gloves or hat, just what I had on the night before.

“I looked at the apartment number on the door, it was our same apartment, only everything else was different. Someone else’s name was on the mailbox. The metal railing along the corridor looked new instead of rusted, and the giant cottonwood tree outside our window was only ten feet tall.

“I kept thinking this had to be a dream. I had no idea what to do or where to go. I’m just standing there outside that apartment when I heard this voice. It said, Go to the 7-Eleven. The closest 7-Eleven was just down the street, about a mile from your old home.”

“My old home?”

He nodded. “You lost the one you have now. Or you would have.”

“If you hadn’t saved me.”

“Losing your home really affected you. Charlotte once told me that somewhere between losing your husband and your home, your spirit broke. You said, ‘The next time I move I hope it’s in a pine box.’ ”

I looked down. “I shouldn’t have said that,” I said, even though I hadn’t yet.

“When I met Charlotte, you were living in a two-bedroom apartment near the dry cleaner. We got the apartment we did so we could be close to you.”

He raked his hand back through his hair. “I walked through the storm to the 7-Eleven. I can’t explain how bizarre that was. The magazines on display had pictures on their covers of people that I either didn’t know or who were younger than I knew them, like Tom Hanks looking like a twelve-year-old, or President Ronald Reagan.

“As I walked in, I picked up a copy of USA Today. The headline was about the Romanian president and his wife being executed. The date on the paper was December 25, 1989.

“I still believed that it was all just a weird dream and that I would wake up any minute, so I got myself a cup of coffee. I was standing there drinking it when I heard an echo of Charlotte’s voice that said, ‘Promise me.’ I looked over to the door just as you walked in. At first glance I thought you were Charlotte. You’re twenty years younger than the Beth I knew, almost the same age as my wife.”

It was hard for me to hear him call her that. His wife.

“I always thought you were pretty, it was obvious to me where Charlotte got her looks, I just didn’t realize how beautiful you were. At that moment I understood why I was there.

“You were also the only thing in this time that I had to hold on to. I approached you hoping that you would recognize me, but of course you didn’t. You couldn’t have. You hadn’t met me yet.

“I had no idea what to say to you. I mean, what am I going to do, tell you the truth? You’d have me locked up. I realized the only option I had to get in your life was to court you.

“I spent the next few days trying to figure out how to survive in 1989. I had credit cards, but there was no account behind them and I didn’t want to explain why I had a card with an expiration date twenty years in the future.

“Fortunately, I had a little over a hundred dollars in my pocket, which is worth a lot more now than it is in 2008.

“I found a cheap basement apartment that didn’t require a deposit, got some fake I.D. and started looking for a job. Then one morning I was eating breakfast and reading my landlord’s newspaper when I realized that I remembered most of the results of the football playoff games I was reading about. With fifty dollars left, I hitchhiked out to Wendover and started laying down bets.

“That’s also where I went after Charlotte was hospitalized, it was Super Bowl Sunday, and I remembered that Joe Montana’s San Francisco 49ers beat John Elway’s Denver Broncos. That’s how I bought the BMW.”

“The big deal you were talking about was the boxing match.” As bizarre as it all sounded, suddenly everything made sense.

“I didn’t really follow boxing,” he said, “but everyone knows about that match. It’s considered one of the biggest upsets of the century.” He took a deep breath. “The night you told me you were going to lose your home, I heard them talking on the radio about the upcoming Tyson-Douglas fight. I knew what I needed to do, I just needed more money than I had to wager. That’s why I asked you to put me on the loan. If I had told you what I was doing, would you have agreed to it?”

“I would have thought you were crazy,” I said.

“Exactly. I was just protecting you from yourself.”

I shook my head. “And I thought you were a crook.”

“I would have thought the same thing.”

I rubbed my hand across my forehead. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. What is this voice you keep talking about?”

“It’s a still, small voice I hear inside my head.”

“That’s how you know things?”

“Sometimes. Some things I just know. Like when I have to go back.” He looked at me gravely. “If I’m going back.”

“What do you mean if?”

“We have choices.”

“What kinds of choices?”

“I can stay or go. It’s like the train comes back to the station and I either get on it or I stay. But it’s the last train. If I board it, I go back to 2008, back to Charlotte, back to whatever I have left.”

I looked at him for a long time. “Will I remember you?”

He nodded. “This is now all part of your reality.”

“Will you remember me?”

He frowned. “I don’t know. In thirteen years, Charlotte will bring me home to meet you. That young man won’t know you. He won’t have crossed this time yet. He’s not me yet. But maybe Christmas Eve in 2008, when we catch up . . .”

I thought it over. “And if you don’t go?”

“I stay here with you and the other future disappears. All Charlotte will ever know of me is the man who loves her mother.”

“So I’m competing with my own daughter for your love.”

He nodded slowly. “I never meant for it to turn out like this.”

“How did you think this was supposed to turn out?”

He raised his hands. “I didn’t know how any of this would turn out. I didn’t plan this when I accepted her promise. I didn’t know I was going to get thrown back in time or caught in some time continuum, or whatever this is. It’s not like they teach this in school, or even Sunday school for that matter. The whole thing is absurd.”

“If you stay, you would remember being married to Charlotte. Just like you do now.”

He nodded.

“You would see someone else take her. You’ll see her fall in love with some other man who will become her husband. Could you do that?”

He looked at me sadly. “I don’t know.”

“Just as I’ll have to see someone else take you.” I looked down for a moment, then back up. I said angrily, “How could you let me fall in love with you?”

“That’s not something I have control over.”

“Then how could you fall in love with me?”

“How could I not?” He took my hand. “I fell in love with Charlotte because she’s beautiful and caring and strong. She’s like pure, sweet water. But you’re the spring. How could I not have fallen in love with you?”

“This is wrong.” I got up and walked out of the bar to the parking lot. Matthew followed me out. When I got to my car, I leaned against it. Matthew walked up behind me and put his arms around my waist. “I never meant to fall in love with you, Beth. It just happened. It doesn’t mean I don’t love Charlotte.”

I turned around. “I can’t take you from my daughter, Matthew. No matter how much losing you hurts.”

“I know.” He took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “I should have just left. It would have been easier.”

“Not for me. I would have blamed myself for losing you. I would have mourned you for the rest of my life.”

For the next few moments we just stood there, the world passing around us, two people caught between two worlds. I touched his cheek. “How long do we have until you have to go back?”

“Christmas Eve.”

“What happens on Christmas Eve?”

“I go back to the apartment. Back to 2008 to finish up what I left undone.”

“Back to see Charlotte . . .” I couldn’t say it. I looked down at the ground. “Three days ago I thought I was going to marry you.” My eyes began to well up. I looked up into his eyes. “You knew all along.”

“I’m sorry. I tried not to . . .”

I put my finger on his lips. “It’s not your fault. It’s what I wanted.” I reached over and took his hand. “Why don’t I feel guilty?”

“Because you haven’t done anything wrong. Charlotte’s not my wife yet.”

I pressed into him, laying my head against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around me. “I know why she falls in love with you,” I said.

He kissed the top of my head.

After a few minutes I said, “Christmas Eve is ten months away. What do we do with ten months?”

Neither of us spoke for a moment, then suddenly he pushed back from me. To my surprise he looked happy, as if he’d just solved some great dilemma. “What would you do if you only had ten months to live and money was no object?”

“I would spend every moment with those I love. And I would travel. I would see everything I’ve always wanted to see.”

“That’s what we’ll do. We’ll cheat time. We’ll live more in ten months than most people do in a lifetime. We’ll spend every moment together and we’ll see everything.”

“What about Charlotte’s schooling?”

“What better education could she receive?”

“Cheat time,” I said. “I like that.” I looked into his face and also smiled. “The clock’s ticking. What are we waiting for?”