: The pink, perpetually moist, round face of Oskar Hammar emerges from the Metairie Road bus into a sickly cloud of opal-amber diesel exhaust radiating in the setting sun. He steps down, narrowly avoiding a puddle only to land squarely on a string of beads left over from the recent parade. He stumbles, then kicks the strand into the gutter as the bus pulls away, another malevolent breath of smog engulfing him.
It doesn’t matter, he thinks to himself.
He makes his way down the sidewalk on Fagot, down Ridgelake and over to the remote one-block street called Shirmaine, down to the small post World War II starter home he grew up in. When he was a child, there were lots of houses like his in the neighborhood. Now, his and the other houses on the street are the only ones left, replaced over the years by pre-fab mini-mansions, each one taller and bigger than the last.
Maybe that will change, he thinks to himself.
Even in the dark, the Hammar home stands out as the only one that looks deserted all the time. Arriving at home at last, he pads along the driveway to the carport, entering through the kitchen door. Inside is a time capsule of the late 20th century, all kept fastidiously clean and carefully used. It is the legacy of his parents. Well, his mother mostly. His father has been dead for 15 years. He was emotionally distant, violent, and poorly educated. Oskar barely remembers speaking at his funeral. But, he bought a solid house and paid for it all before he died. It was his mother he adored. She died early in the pandemic.
She was infected on Canal Street, watching the Rex Parade. Ash Wednesday night he rushed her in a cab to the hospital. The last he saw of her was being wheeled away on a gurney by masked nurses with their machines stabbed inside her. Ten days later she was lying in Tharp Sontheimer, one of the first to die after the shutdown began. No funeral. A solitary burial in Lakelawn, by her only surviving child, and a couple of masked strangers waiting for him to leave.
Oskar had always hated Carnival and Mardi Gras. Loathed it, actually. The only reason he went was because his mother adored it. The noise, the smells, the throws, the food, the crowds, everything he despised gave her delight. That was enough for him to endure it all. And then, it killed her.
Pushing the sweaty strands of pale blond hair away from his face, Oskar opens the door under the carport; the key slipping in like a familiar lover. Both lock and key are original equipment, wearing each other down over decades. Impossible to pick, his mother used to joke. Removing his shoes, he puts them into the little wooden box by the door and steps inside the darkened kitchen.
Routine. Close door, lock door, put key on hook, flip on light. Drilled into him at five by his father, yelling in his face. Do it in order. Don’t miss a step. Make it routine. Flip on light!
A single circular fluorescent light buzzes to life over the ancient Formica dinette set against the wall decorated with a painted window and a wooden window box filled with plastic plants. The yellow walls, once the color of sunshine, have gone a pallid ochre. The small kitchen is avocado, but one well past its prime. The most recent appliance is the spotless radar range over the gas stove. His father installed it in 1975 for his mother because it was the latest thing. Everything gleams, with only a few chips of paint missing here and there. Despite being spotlessly clean, the room looks like how liver frying in onions smells. The brown patterned linoleum is in remarkable shape, due mostly to his late mother’s devotion to floor waxing.
She believed those commercials. The ones that promised health, happiness and domestic bliss were the direct result of a sparkling kitchen floor. He keeps it up for her, all of it regularly gleaming. Though, there is seldom any light to see it.
He takes off his jacket, hangs it on the hook near the door, and walks over to the sink. He pushes a button on the wall under the cabinets and another circular light above bathes him and the stainless steel sink in a ghastly blue-white light.
Oskar washes his hands for one minute. He has always done this, ever since he was a pudgy, sullen child. Digging under his nails, he looks at the scrubber his mother kept on the sink. A little yellowed poof of plastic netting attached to a purple plastic knob with the initials K & B printed on the top. It upset her when that drugstore closed down. It was the only memory of the place she had left. It has never been used. She wouldn’t allow it.
The whole house is a time capsule of his family, left nearly as it was when they all died. But, not for sentimental reasons. He keeps everything exactly as he remembers. That way he knows if anything changes. He dries his hands on the dishtowel, hangs it up neatly folded on the rack, and turns out the light.
Walking through the dark, stagnant living room, past the boxy furniture, he walks down the darkened hallway covered in honey colored wood paneling. Parents bedroom, sister’s bedroom, Oskar’s bedroom. Well, Oskar’s old bedroom. After his mother died, he put her things in storage, and his late sister Alecia’s things out on the curb and moved into the main bedroom. His petty revenge on Alecia for being born.
He opens the door, which swings away into the darkness. He steps inside and is bathed in light.
The room is bare. That peculiar echo of empty rooms is disturbingly absent. Only the hum. The window on the opposite side has no curtains, looking out onto the dark, bleak rear yard and tall wooden fence.
In the center of the room is a simple wooden chair at a small card table. On top of the table is a silver metallic orb, the size of a basketball. The room is perfectly lit, despite there being no light source in the room. And that light stops at the doorway and the window. From the outside, the room is still dark
Oskar found the thing years ago, drawn to the low-level hum it produces. Touching the orb sent him back into the past. At first, it was only the past of his immediate family. It required a lot of concentration and always left him exhausted later. When Alecia died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Oskar went back and saved her, changing the world around him for the worse. His interference caused the deaths of both his father and sister. After that, his trips were strictly observational.
Until his mother died. The only one in the whole family he actually loved. The only one who mattered.
Oskar is going back again. This time, to save his mother. He has learned in his travels through time that merely plucking someone from their fate doesn’t work. You have to go back further. You have to fundamentally change the circumstances that brought about the conditions of the thing you want changed.
Oskar is going back further than he’s ever gone before. To the mid- 19th century. He has his agenda in place, he’s nearly completed the research. He knows the names, the places, the events he needs to change. He just needs a few more items before he begins the end.
He’s going back in time to kill Mardi Gras…This is My New Orleans.
No comments:
Post a Comment