moment.
"Paul," his mother had told her young son as she knelt in front of him, tears streaming from her own eyes, "I'm the one who left the gate open. You know how Rusty loves car rides? Rusty ran out of the gate and a man driving down the street hit him. I'm so, so sorry. I'm afraid he's died."
Died.
To an eight-year old kid, died?
Not Rusty.
Not his best friend.
His mother could only nod.
Instead of allowing a consoling hug, Paul pushed his mother away and ran to his bedroom.
Inside the car, Paul felt his eyes well up with tears. The memory felt so fresh, so new. He ran his hand over his arm and felt the gooseflesh that had appeared. It was like it had just happened.
Once more he looked back at the glasses, left abandoned, they looked so benign.
"Jesus!," Paul snapped, his curiosity had won. He pushed the car door open and darted over to them, scooped them up and ran back to his car.
Within the safety of his Lexus, he flipped the glasses over in his hands. No scratches, no nicks, and on closer inspection, only a small "Made In China" was engraved on the arm.
Is this some kind of joke? Some weird reality show set-up? Paul looked past his dashboard and let his gaze scan further out. Maybe there was a camera, someone documenting his every move, his every reaction.
Except for two women that he spotted walking side-by-side out front of his building clad in their Nike's with their business attire using their lunch hour for exercise, there was no one around.
What the hell? Paul was angry at the flood of emotions that overwhelmed him. He looked down at the frames, and he knew what he had to.
He put them back on.
Instantly he was once again in the backyard of his childhood home and like before, it felt like he had stepped into a photograph and right back into that moment.
Voices caught his attention this time. He nearly knew them better than he knew his own. While a smile crossed his face, he didn't like what he was hearing; his parents were arguing from inside the house...again.
His father?
Paul vividly recalled having to identify his father in the county morgue after his father had died of a stroke more than five years earlier.
He stepped up to the porch and peered inside.
Paul blinked as he cupped each hand to his head in an effort to see more clearly inside. He tapped his temples as he realized he wasn't wearing the sunglasses.
As he took a second look, the voices remained raised inside and there they were. Both of his parents were standing in the kitchen.
"Dad? Mom?"
They didn't react to his words and Paul reached up to the door handle, touching the gritty paint that his father had covered the handle in, and remembered his reasoning: to get a better grasp. He pulled on the door handle and the door pulled toward him just as it had when he lived there.
"Dad?" he called out as he took a tentative step inside, and into the all-too familiar surroundings of long ago. Paul's heart raced as he was looking at the impossible.
Yet, there he was, and he was flabbergasted at how young his father was, how young they both were.
Twenty feet away from him stood his father, who rocked on the balls of his feet for balance. His mother was only a scant few feet away from him, hands on her hips as she often had. As Paul called out, neither seemed to hear him. Paul watched his father manner and was amazed at how some of his past had faded away, memories pushed away or buried. What had faded over time were the sharp memories of just how drunk he would get at times.
Memories, he had heard, never truly leave. They're just buried under the layers of living that come from the day-in day-out stuff. He thought that with time, all of the bad stuff would simply evaporate. Time was an ally. But, his father's alcoholism was all but staring him in the face and there stood the woman who drove him there.
Paul felt the uneasiness he felt as a kid wash over him and he wanted to run. He always had as a kid, any time there was a quarrel. He ran. This time he stayed put. His eyes scanned the yellowed wallpaper, the antique bookshelves that held so many of his favorite childhood books and his father's favorite chair. The chair he could find his father in while he read the newspaper or fell asleep in nearly every night. Everything was in its original place, everything.
"Dad, Mom?" he called out, trying again, as he headed toward the kitchen and toward their voices. He stepped up to them, walked around them, waved his hands but they had no idea that he was with them.
His mind was working but processing everything in slow-motion. It was only then that Paul realized it wasn't a dream, he was a spectator of a moment long ago resurrected.
Paul felt his gut clench as he realized what the argument was about.
They were arguing over his father's drinking...again.
His mother's hands on her hips, his father's arms were crossed. It was a familiar face-off, he had long forgotten.
"You can't just run away," Irene said, her voice firm. "You have employees that count on you. So, you lost the contract. Big deal! You can land another. Your business is going down the tubes and instead of fighting to save its life; you would rather bury your head in the sand and drink your way into oblivion. I have half a mind to call..."
"Yeah, you have half a mind and you're not calling anyone." Frank bellowed, lifting onto the balls of his feet in emphasis, pointing a finger her direction. His cheeks were rosy, as they always were when he had been drinking. He turned toward the refrigerator.
"Don't get another beer, Frank, for Chrissakes!"
"I don't need to hear this," Frank exploded, pivoting back quickly and slamming his fist down on the dining room table, the resultant move overturning an abandoned glass half full of water.
Paul stood aghast in the living room of a home that he knew no longer existed, watching the man he adored but knew was dead. He remembered his rage, his temper that would flare for seemingly no reason at all. Had he forgotten those moments? Had he erased them from his mind as being too painful?
"Obviously, you do, Frank," Irene shouted right back at her husband. "You're lucky the kids aren't home to see you like this."
Paul's eyes darted, with practices familiarity to the wall and read the clock, "1:32."
"We were in school," Paul muttered aloud, within easy earshot of his parents but they continued to interact unabated.
Frank spun on his heels and headed outside. His mother ran after him, pleading with him, "You're in no condition to drive." Paul followed on her heels.
Irene grabbed his arm as he opened the car door. Frank flung it off with a jerk of his shoulder. Even more determined, she lunged at him as he climbed in behind the wheel, the fight now was over the car keys.
Frank angrily shoved Irene and she backpedaled a few steps with flailing arms and fell onto the pavement.
Paul was thunderstruck; he had never seen a fight between them become physical.
Frank started the engine before Irene had a chance to move.
In a flash, Paul and his Mom both saw a reddish blur that was Rusty as he bounded past the open gate and rounded the back of the car. They both knew how much he loved car rides.
"NO!", Irene and Paul yelled simultaneously as the car lurched backward.
His father hit Rusty and ran him over!
His father?
Paul's heart pounded in his chest as he heard his mother's scream, an anguished scream he had never heard before. She loved that dog, too.
Horrified, and panicked, Frank fumbled for and pulled down the gear shift, and hit the accelerator.
The rear wheels went back over Rusty's limp body a second time!
"Jesus Christ, Frank!" Irene screamed, her voice an octave higher and purely venomous.
Unable to step in to the moment, Paul could only kneel beside his mother as she cradled the dog's head in her arms. Blood poured from his mouth and the large laceration
over his rib cage.
Frank poured himself from the car and stumbled back to see what he had done.
"It was an accident," Frank said solemnly as Irene could only lay her hand against the blood soaked fur as the dog took his last labored breath.
Paul pulled the glasses off and let them fall into his lap.
Once again surrounded by the all-too familiar concrete, steel and asphalt that made up the corporate structure that sat all around him and housed the business he had given his entire being for.
In the plush interior of his car, he inhaled sharply and wiped away tears that fell down his cheeks.
His father had killed Rusty?
"...my... God...," Paul said squeezing his eyes shut against the pain that surged through him. The realization was like a razor's edge, cutting. But, this tore, tore into his soul.
He looked down at the glasses and shook his head.
He vividly recalled his mother's tearful embrace and taking the blame for leaving the gate open.
The image of the gate left standing open that afternoon...
He was only a kid, an impressionable kid. A kid who loved his four-legged best friend and revered his father.
In that moment, the pedestal Paul had forever had his father standing upon not only cracked but exploded into minute pieces of dust.
A cavalcade of images flooded him.
Emotions seized him and he felt himself shake.
He realized the hatred he felt for his mother for most of his life had its start that very afternoon.
When his father died, Paul blamed his mother for it. He blamed her for everything. He blamed her for driving his father to drink in the first