The Knicknackery Issue Two - 2014 | Page 24

Rebecca Podos

loise finds her old time machine in her mother's basement the week after the funeral, behind water-rotted camping gear, inside the packaging for an Easy Bake Oven. The machine looks as she remembers, if smaller. Silver, cylindrical, bowling-ball sized. A spaghetti of wiring is visible inside. She secures it in a box of items to save alongside her mother's records and party wine glasses, though her mom threw no parties, and if she ever brought a man around, she probably served him wine in one of her eight Bank of Bethel Beach mugs.

Eloise takes the box home. That night she pours vodka into a glass, puts on a Cat Stevens record, climbs into bed with the machine and closes her eyes. When she opens them it’s one week before her mother’s death; she's sitting in her mother’s kitchen and her mother is poking eggs around a pan.

Pleased beyond all measure, Eloise calls out from work and visits her mother every day for six days. On the seventh day, with a glass of vodka (which is never depleted) and a record (which never wears down) and the machine, she travels back and repeats the week again, again, again.

There are complications.

During her visits, she describes to her mother a park she strolled by, and later realizes the park exists nowhere at all. While walking she marvels at the ugliness of a man on the sidewalk, turns back and finds not a man but the dead stalk of a fern in a pot. Every Wednesday at 8:35 pm, all of the fish in Eloise's tank go belly-up. At first these side effects unnerve her. But she decides there's always a price to be paid for time, and if it isn’t grief or regret, it’s something else.

E

19

๛

The Machine