Time Capsule

Something came in the mail today. A small cardboard box. Glancing down quickly—it was pouring out—she saw her first name on the label. Damp and dirty from sitting in the flower bed all day, she brought it inside and left it to dry on the mat beside her equally damp shoes. She changed her clothes and began preparing dinner.

An hour later, her husband stood dripping in the kitchen doorway, waving the box at her. “Someone's playing a joke on you, Carrie,” he said. He shook the box once, lightly. It didn't make a sound.

“What are you talking about?”

“You tell me.” He grinned and held the box out to her. She handed him the wooden spoon she was using to stir the chili, then, arching an eyebrow, took the box.

“What are you up to?” she asked. Joe was known for practical joking, and she was overdue.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said, waving the chili spoon like a white flag. “I swear.”

She read the entire label this time. “To Carrie Foreman” was written in pencil, in large, shaky capital letters. Foreman was her maiden name; she hadn't used it in over thirty years. The street address was old, too: It was the address of her childhood home, which had burned down the year after her parents sold it. There was no return address.

It unnerved her, the handwriting, the name, the address. “This isn't funny, Joe. Did you do this?”

“No, but I wish I had. Great gag. What's inside?”

She shoved the box at him and reclaimed her chili spoon. “You know, since you're so very interested, I think you should open it.”

She expected him to talk his way out of it, to duck and dodge so that she had to open it herself. Instead, he took out his pocket knife and began cutting through the packing tape that covered the tiny box. When he was finished, he looked up at her. “I didn't send this, Carrie. I swear.”

“Mmm.” She stirred too forcefully, splattering chili sauce onto the clean stove top.

After lifting the lid from the box, Joe dumped a small handful of Styrofoam packing peanuts onto the counter.

“Well?”

“It's something wrapped in wax paper,” he said, removing a small packet. “I can't tell—” He held it up to the light and squinted at it, trying to make out its contents without opening it.

But Carrie knew what it was. She knew right away. It was a single baby-pink blossom off the Japanese cherry tree that grew in the front yard of the house she grew up in. When her father was remodeling the kitchen, preparing the house to be sold, her mother had suggested leaving a time capsule behind in one of the bulkheads he was building for the new cabinets. She was already dying, but Carrie didn't know it.

Together, they selected the largest, most perfect blossom off the tree, wrapped it in wax paper, and pressed it in the old dictionary for two days. Her father had laughed, but he promised to tuck it away somewhere in the kitchen, a token of blessing for future residents.


“What the hell?” Joe was still pretending to make out the contents. The wax paper crinkled as he unfolded the carefully-preserved blossom.

“Don't!” She put her hand over his. “This isn't funny, Joe—I can't believe you would think this is funny.”

“I swear to God, Carrie, I don't know what you're talking about. What is this?”

He wasn't lying. She could see the concern in his eyes. She pulled her hand away and let him finish unwrapping. When he was done, the fragile blossom lay exposed to air and fluorescent light for the first time in decades. Brown around the edges, it had retained much of its pink-and-greenness.

She couldn't help herself. She slid her fingers carefully underneath the paper and lifted the flower to her face. She closed her eyes and breathed in. Behind the odor of chili spices from dinner, there was a sweetly delicate fragrance, one she knew from memory. For an all-too-brief moment she was there again, the house unburnt, her parents alive, watching the beloved tree bloom decadently for a handful of days, its lush blossoms carpeting the grass with their petals. She was there, she was, alongside her mother, laughing and laughing as they plucked flowers for each other's hair.

“I swear, Carrie,” Joe repeated, “I swear I don't know anything about this.”

And he was right. He didn't know anything about it. In that moment, she felt that words would never do justice to what she was feeling, so, as a compromise, she offered up the blossom.

“Take a deep breath,” she said. And he did.

Reverse Migration

Rocking slowly, barefoot, she studies birds. Each flip of the page reveals a new species, and she scans her backyard in search of—what is it again?—a yellow-shafted Northern Flicker. But there's nothing—not an oriole, not a robin, none of the birds she can identify without her book. Nothing there but the broken dishwasher squatting on the deck, waiting to be junked. Beyond the waving branches, the gray sky flashes white.

Reluctantly, she sets the book aside and draws the laptop near. She should finish today; she should buckle down and do it. She makes a mental note and tacks it to the wall of her imagination, for all her thoughts to see. Do not disturb!

Do not disturb me, bird book! Do not disturb me, silent, invisible birds! Do not disturb me, boredom. . . .

She types and types. She makes tiny, frantic circles on the touchpad with her fingertip. Behind the noise of pounded keys, there's a growling rumble and the imaginary echo of her mother's voice calling her inside. Remove these electronics from this aluminum shell of a room—a room under trees, for Heaven's sake! But this idea of shifting, of detaching and then reattaching, is more than she can bear just now.

The rain falls hard, and everything grows dim. Annoyed, she reaches for the floor lamp and ramps up the dial as far as it will go. It hardly helps.

Lightning strikes nearby, and she glances up—a reflex, but it's enough. How can she work through this? The sound: frenetic drumbeats, millions of them. The smell: pine-needle-y, damp, woodpile-ish. The sight: limbs arching across the deck like wings on a mammoth mama bird.

Fat drops cling to the undersides of everything. They swell, they pop, they fall. They rain dance on the bleached wood planks amidst fallen leaves, broken twigs, and nail pops. The grill cover, slick with wet, glistens. She watches and waits and then—


A splash of red, right there, right in front of her. A cardinal sways and nibbles at tiny seed kernels. She can't take her eyes off it, even though the lawn needs mowing and the weeds weave in and out of the rusty wire-mesh fence and the dishwasher's still there—still ugly—with its pulled-plug wires and corrugated tubing flapping in the wind. (She makes another mental note—“Call for special pickup.”—and files it under ALREADY FORGOTTEN.)

She watches the bird hop and peck. She rocks, pushing off the grey carpet with her big toe. The rain tapers off, leaving trees and grass a garish green, the green of gloopy icing on a three-year-old's birthday cake. Sweet. Pretty, even.

The storm passes quickly overhead. Next door, a bird, unidentifiable, laughs to himself: "Heee—a-heee—a-heee!" Her cardinal flies sunward—unfiled, untacked. She makes another mental note, elbows resting on her knees. Go on, she says, waving her words in the air, disturb me! Shake me, blow in with rain, wind, and birds!

This life, she says, is short.