Page 27 of The Marigold Trail

R eality is sometimes hard to discern. But just like I know the difference between the hazy frustration that is not being able to move your feet while running in a dream or feeling cold wind slap me in waves as tangible sweat runs down my back during an actual run—I know with certainty that the very thing I’ve dreamed about for more than half of my life is happening to me. I’m kissing Ben and I feel like I should break into song or a dance.

That is, until the nerves come and I fear the knots in my stomach will never be undone. When our lips part and everything is slowly brought back into focus, I feel the alternate universe choke on its own cruel and twisted laugh. I’d somehow managed to appeal to Eighties Ben without trying.

The shock of it all leaves me silent and introspective, unable to see anything outside of the arcade room blur. The alternate universe must be playing an inside joke on me since all of my attempts to get closer to Ben while attempting to reverse my situation and find my way back home have led me into romance with him. My already muddy situation just became much more complex. I might as well be a pig drowning in the mud.

“Gag me with a spoon!” Diana emerges from behind the arcade chairs making the two of us jump in our seats. “That’s my best friend, Ben! How long have you two been sharing saliva?” Her eyes gape at Ben and then turn back to scrutinize me.

She made it sound so gross. Just as she hinted earlier this week, she doesn’t seem to be okay with our pairing. I give her an apologetic look, though I don’t feel apologetic one bit. Thirty-year-old, Non-80s-Land Diana encouraged this.

“We just kissed,” Ben says. His words are icy. His annoyance seems to loom over the passion I felt from him just moments ago. This is going to be fun.

“Where’s Tyler?” he asks, his tone slips into a more serious one.

“Getting drinks over there.” Diana points to Tyler who’s walking back from the food counter with two sodas in hand. She beams when he waves.

Ben stands. He looks large and puffed out like an animal ready to fight. He swoops in with an arm grab and cuffs Tyler’s forearm before Tyler is able to hand the drink off to Diana.

“You and me. After this, we’ve got to talk,” he says as friendly as a roaring bear can. Tyler’s carbonated attitude breaks and he walks over to Diana, then calmly and carefully hands her the drink, not because he’s afraid of spilling, but because he’s afraid handing the drink to Diana will be too close a touch for Brother Bear Ben to handle right now.

Diana insisted on spending Sunday with me. Tyler had asked her to spend Sunday with him, but in an attempt to show me her loyalty and send me an underlying message, she’d said no. In her own words, she’d spent the last half of the week “moseying around with Ty” and she needed girl time.

Though I see right through her words. Her underlying message to me is: I’m turning down date night for you, thus you should do the same. If you’re going to date my brother, he will come second to our friendship and we will have uninterrupted time together just like before, which the boys are exempt from.

I was learning that in 80s-Landia if you kissed someone it was assumed by the general public that you were now going with them. My mess with Ben was a lot more complicated now that Diana assumed her brother and I were together. Though the only way I’d know for sure that we were “together” is if he sat me down and told me just that. I wanted more than anything to be in a relationship with him, but at the same time I hadn’t yet admitted time travel defeat. Was I planning to stay?

Diana passes me a plate to set on my side of the table as I lay knives and forks along Marcie’s muted floral patterned tablecloth. I position each utensil with exactness to meet her table setting expectations. We’d been assigned kitchen table duty before dinner with Officer Berrett’s family this evening at five. As soon as I heard the news that he’d been invited over I’d spiraled into a bit of a panic. I’d promised Marcie that we’d spend the rest of the weekend at home and despite painstaking efforts, pleading to redirect our dinner elsewhere, Marcie wasn’t having any of it.

The stabbing sensation dancing around in my body worsens as the blue goose clock on the wall draws nearer to Officer Berrett’s arrival. The feeling becomes more and more unsettling with each minute that passes. Time is pulling pranks on my mind. I don’t want five to arrive, but I also can’t stand playing the waiting game either. So after Marcie gives us her table setting approval, Diana and I sit on my bed, legs sprawled out next to each other with our backs smushed against pillows and the wall, listening to a 38 Special cassette tape.

My nerves rapidly escalate with each glance at the digital clock and I am leaning on 38 Special to get me through—its musical dissociating powers are strong enough to preoccupy my mind with thoughts of Ben and skating rather than the impending doom that is eating dinner with Officer Berrett. I’d come to find that after twenty-four hours of replaying “Caught Up In You,” rewind after rewind, I could experience the same butterfly-inducing sensation with each listen. Turns out the feelings didn’t stop.

Diana had yet to mention my lip-locking incident with her brother. I was okay with that for the time being. I needed less complicated things to occupy my mind to keep the pre-Berrett family dinner nerves at bay.

Diana rolls gracefully off the bed and begins looking under it for something as if she’s done this very same maneuver multiple times before.

“So I’m thinking of growing my hair out a bit like Rosie Perez from Soul Train . It looked so good last night,” she says. We’d come home and turned on the Soul Train line for half an hour before bed.

“You’d rock that. You do kind of look like her,” I say. “But not the eyes. She has really intense eyes. You have innocent eyes,” I say with exaggeration to provoke her, and she thanks me for the compliment, never minding the innocent tag I’d just given her. She had enough mature garnishment that she could be confident in the bits of innocence that came with her looks.

She pulls out a can of Coca-Cola from under my bed and tosses it at me. That’s new. I didn’t know I had those stashed under the bed. I could’ve popped a can open all these nights instead of sneaking into the kitchen looking for snacks, hyperaware that if Marcie caught me I’d be punished severely. She was a three-meal-a-day, no-snacking kind of helmsman.

“Where’d you and Tyler go last night?” I ask. “You ditched us for a good two hours.” Diana’s cheeks turn the color of raspberry truffles.

“We drove around. Tyler wasn't feeling well,” she says.

“You’re kidding? He jumped over like eight people.”

“I guess even Tyler has limits. You can’t bring up my date without me asking about yours. I almost peed my pants last night seeing you kiss my brother.” She chews on the Coke can tab nervously, obviously meaning to change the subject. “Who kissed who first?”

The door flings open and hits the wall with force, revealing casual, ponytail-wearing Erica who looks as if she’s been reading in her room all day. Her reading glasses sit crooked on the brim of her nose.

“You kissed Ben? How? I thought he hated you.” Erica nearly shouts.

Erica snaps her fingers together and then points under the bed. “Hand me a Coke from under there, would ya?”

“Yes, somehow those two kissed,” Diana says and tosses her a can.

“He’s the one that kissed me!” I defend myself so Diana doesn’t think I made advances on him. I’m just as shocked as they are about the kiss.

“It’s only been a few days since he and Bennette broke up,” Erica says, looking confused. “Anyway, Mom told me to tell you dinner’s ready. We’ll talk later.”

I grab the crossword puzzle planner on my dresser, knowing I’ll need something comforting to hold in my hands for this nerve-racking dinner, and follow her into the kitchen.

The doorbell rings as Marcie uses her ladle to scoop something she calls “hamburger casserole cabbage patch stew” into the remaining bowls at the table setting. I look down at my bowl. The rich smell sparks a peppery, piquant something in my senses. Spring-colored, crunchy cabbage pokes out of the juicy brown liquid that shares space with a few purple beans, chopped up tomatoes, and coarse ground meat in the bowl in front of me.

My stomach grumbles and I can’t tell if it’s because the food smells good or if it’s because Officer Berrett and his family are walking into the living room. The Berrett family surrounds our table as I reach into the harvest gold painted dish and sprinkle shredded cheddar at the peak of my purple bean mound. Officer Berrett smiles at me from across the table leaf as I bring my head up to taste my first peppery, sweet bite. He’s brought his wife and son, who are about to claim a seat on each side of him.

“Kenneth sure loves stew. Good choice for dinner, Mrs. Atkinson,” Officer Berrett says. The table of eyes peer over in little Kenneth’s direction as they settle in around us. The boy lives up to the allegations and begins slurping without hesitation. Across from him, Diana matches his energy, shoving in spoonfuls as if eating cabbage patch stew was a timed event. Her case was likely due to hunger more than taste. She’d overslept, missing Marcie’s scheduled Saturday morning breakfast, and with no snacking allowed, had only enjoyed lunch. Her fast metabolism needed sustenance.

The conversation rears toward Pops’ two week hike up Mount Kilimanjaro where a lot of sipping, nodding, and questions about how long he’ll be on the mountain and potential dangers he might face in the wilderness occur.

After I’ve finished my soup, I realize my nerves have settled a bit. Officer Berrett remains relatively uninterested in my presence. I wonder if he’s given up on suspecting my involvement with Marigold and questioning me about FBI related topics, as I stir my spoon around my empty bowl.

The conversation has died down and I catch Erica discretely reading The Two Towers underneath the tablecloth while Diana sits like a proper 1950s private school student charmingly focused on the teacher with a pleasant smile. She’s always been good with adults.

The adults become lost in conversation as Kenneth runs his fifth lap around the table. I consider this the right atmosphere to glance at an already half-finished crossword under the table, scanning the numbers hoping to find a clue that stands out, playing it by mood.

The first to catch my eye is #14. Boob Tube . I struggle with my hand stretched underneath the table trying to scratch the word TELEVISION into the ten boxes. As I write the letters, I notice the word next to it has been filled in but it’s not my handwriting.

I recognize the handwriting as Ben’s, having read his notes every day for the last five years. The word says BEATS across # 27 ’s blocks, but the prompt is One Crying “Uncle!,” which is clearly not the right word.

“So how are your kids liking school this year?” Officer Berrett asks.

My chin dips down to my neck to take a closer look at the writing and this time the words 38 SPECIAL pop out at me like a whale amongst a thousand tiny sea creatures. I gulp wondering how I hadn’t noticed this block of letters until now. The phrase GENESIS BEATS 38 SPECIAL has been manipulated into puzzle squares near the bottom with random letters filled in around it. This puzzle’s totally compromised with Ben’s doodles.

“Davy likes his teacher,” Marcie says, “Steven not so much, but I remind Stevie every week that sucking up to his teacher goes a long way. He’s brought a few apples to school.” Marcie laughs as if her comment is some sort of inside joke.

“She doesn’t know I ate them.” I hear Steven whisper to Davy next to me.

“Atta joined the cheer team that Erica’s captain of,” Marcie continues. I softly shut the pages of my spoiled crossword underneath the table, largely aware that the attention is now focused on me. I’m right. A flock of furrowed eyebrows shoots my way.

“It must be nice having Atta back at the house,” Officer Berrett says, referring to the absence that would have been if I really were an FBI agent on assignment in the eighties. But I’m not. My badge is from the future and the family had never experienced my absence.

Curiosity over Ben spoiling my crossword lasts mere seconds before alarm bells of concern ring in my ears about where Officer Berrett plans to take this conversation.

If Officer Berrett wants to play games and confuse my family around me, he can try. I’ll handle the consequences. But what if he’s looked into my connections with the Bureau over the last few weeks? Has he been curious enough to ask his Marigold friends about my status at the FBI? Berrett had more power than me in this dynamic, and I couldn’t help but think he was still chewing on my mention of Marigold.

“Yes, she does get lost a lot at Diana’s. It’s nice to see her here this weekend,” Marcie says. She might as well purchase a billboard with my picture on it that says “Atta Atkinson, Not a bona fide FBI agent. Using false aliases to con officers into motorcycle rides. Wanted for arrest” so that Officer Berrett can ride by on his motorcycle and see it on his way to work. This conversation is starting to gear toward the feeling of walking on feet-pinching Legos and it will soon feel more like walking on fractured shards of glass if we don’t rein it in. I stare at Diana with pleading eyes asking her to help me out—I don’t want this conversation to linger on me.

“Atta and I spend almost every weekend together,” Diana says, being the good sidekick that she is. She shrugs apologetically at me, knowing she has no control over whether or not the dinner table continues to talk about me.

“How long have you been back exactly?” Officer Berrett challenges. He raises his clear yellow-tinted glass to his face and shows an oversized smile. At this, I know this cunning fox is trying to play me, confirming my suspicions. He wants more details.

“Back from the dead, you mean?” Davy can’t resist the traitorous comment. I’m grateful for his immaturity at this moment.

“About two weeks,” I snap. Under the table I’m crossing my fingers, and toes, and tempted to cross my crossword puzzle with some expletive words, that he will stop the questions there.

The befuddled look on everyone’s faces certifies a smirk on Officer Berrett’s.

“Sounds like Atta’s living a fun double life,” he says and then smiles at me. “Atta, I never heard back about the marigolds. If you’re still interested in seeing them, the offer’s still there.”

“Oh, I’m sure Atta would love to see your flowers,” Marcie says. “Did you catch her trying to glimpse at them through your fence? She’s always been a curious one, that one.”

This is interesting territory. How am I going to ward off Officer Berrett? The urge to formulate an emergency exit plan from the table hits me hard but I manage an answer instead.

“Yes, I’ll have to stop by sometime.”

Officer Berrett ends the questioning there, but to my dismay looks thoroughly satisfied for the rest of dinner. I spend the last bit of conversation stealing glances at my crossword under the table, attempting to appear clueless about his flower comment. I end up finding a tiny asterisk an ant step above Ben's GENESIS BEATS 38 SPECIAL . The pairing footnote to the asterisk contains Ben’s microscopic graffiti. My mom even thinks so. is written in tiny, hardly legible writing.

My head nearly hits the table trying to read the text. Then a small reminder hits me at the mention of Ben’s mom—who is actually his grandmother in Non-80s-Land. She was the one who gifted Ben and Diana the plastic color-wired phone before it had been given to me.

“Atta has her face shoved in the butt crack of a book, Mom! And you said I had to leave Stretch Armstrong in my room during dinnertime,” Davy fusses, then flashes a cagey smile in my direction. I let the book fall into my lap.

“Atta, come on. Now’s not the time to bury your face in a puzzle. Not with our guests at the dinner table,” Marcie’s voice cracks. She grabs the book out of my lap and sets it on the kitchen island.