Coming Full Circle
Ending at the Beginning. Beginning at the End
Of all the many circles which gave order and meaning to our lives, with all the departures and arrivals, the comings and goings of many unexpected visitors, Our journeys on the various errands that we ran during the nights and weekends when I was home, my father’s favourite circle, of the many touching and intersecting circles, was the one that took me away every morning to the Genevieve school and brought me back in the afternoon to our home in White Plains. It had become a ritual for him. He would sit on a folding chair usually placed about a foot from the curb, waiting with a snack and a bottle of juice for me. Now that I was 12, he didn’t know how much longer he could treat me this way with adolescence clearly upon me. I had often thought about, in those years I was alone at the Spellman School, how much I missed both my mother and father. For my mother who had died, I understood that there was nothing I could do. I could not bring the dead back to life. But with my father there was a different set of circumstances and I had found a way to make a reconciliation, not only possible, but attainable, and I had done so through the most extraordinary of circumstances and in the process of bringing myself back to my father, I had laid the groundwork for many other reconciliations and reunions, and what would become the foundations of OMEGA.
The bus was running 15 minutes late on this warm April afternoon. From his vantage point, my father could see down the block to the intersection where the small school bus usually turned. Every day that my bus was late, my father had worried, not because he anticipated that something would happen more but because he thought that it could happen, and he learned over the months that with me anything, even the seemingly impossible, could happen.
He was relieved when he could see the bus turning right onto the street and driving slowly toward our house. The bus pulled to a slow stop and the door opened with a puff of air, as though it were like my father releasing the air from his nervous lungs. With so many out of the ordinary things, having happened and continuing to happen, his nervousness had become both persistent and endemic to him.
“Good afternoon, Mr Margoldis,” The aide on the bus greeted. “Jonathan has been asking for you.”
“Yes,” the bus driver agreed. “He’s been saying ‘Where’s Daddy?’”
Yes,” The bus driver agreed. “He’s been saying, ‘Where is my Daddy?’ several times.”
Of course, I always knew where my daddy would be as I told my father once as we were driving to school.
“I am here. Always here waiting,” my father replied.
“Thank you, Daddy,” I acknowledged as I climbed off the bus.
“Tomorrow there is a presentation after school. Jonathan should be a half-hour later,” the bus driver told him.
“I will be here waiting,” he responded again.
My father handed me a chocolate cupcake and a bottle of apple juice. The bus then closed the door and pulled away from the curb. Both of us watching the bus until the turn of our street now a quarter mile down the road. As we turned around to go into the house, I turned and spoke for me to my father, “Today, I have a visitor, Daddy.”
“Thank you for telling me. Who is it this time?”
I didn’t respond. If I had told him who it would be, I was certain he would not believe me, and if he did believe me it would be a tremendous burden for him to deal with while he waited.
We went into the house and he stopped in the foyer waiting for me to take my cupcake and juice to the table and take my bookbag off my shoulder. It was a routine here I had repeated 107 times before. Then I walked to the table,
“How was the school today?” My father asked.
I stopped the moment and took a 360° look around the room, finally fixing my gaze on my mother’s photograph on the wall.
“Be patient with a visitor,” I told him.””He means the best for me.”
“Am I not always patient?” He replied.
I went to the table to eat my cupcake. My father was happy that I was communicating more. I wish I could’ve told him what it cost me to speak.
“How was school today?“ He again asked me. Sometimes when he asked me a second time, I answered. But this day I didn’t respond. There was an earthquake in India and I could hear the shouting of thousands in my ears.
“Did you draw any pictures for me today?” He asked me.
I opened my bag and removed two drawings, one of which appeared to be the Golden Gate Bridge. My father had been to San Francisco by himself twice when I was three years old. The second was a portrait of an older man, whose face my father seemed to recognise, but we didn’t know from where. I laid the drawings on the table.
“You say we’re running out of room on the walls in the living room. Do you want me to put them here or in your bedroom?”
Again I didn’t respond.
“I’ve been to San Francisco,” he told me as he looked at the drawing of The Golden Gate Bridge.
I turned my head for him and spoke slowly, “Bad days coming.”
I knew he had no idea what I meant by these words, and I struggled with whether or not I should tell him this. But I knew he needed to be prepared for what I saw coming,
“You got a letter today from your friend Paula Hightower.” He paused. “I can read it to you after supper.” He placed her letter on the tabletop. I already knew what her letter said. I had seen her writing it.
“I wish I would know what you were thinking about.”
I reached into the pocket of my jacket and removed what looked like an index card. I handed it to my father. It was clearly a short poem.
“Do you want me to read this to you?” my father asked.
“Yes, Daddy,” I answered.
He lifted the card, removed the pair of reading glasses from his pocket and began to read aloud, “My task has been a simple one. To find a way to make things right. I realise I have just begun. I am asking others to join my fight. Help me help them!”
“I will always help you, Jonathan,” my father responded.
He went to a kitchen cabinet and removed the frying pan and a small pot.
“I bought macaroni and spinach. I think I’m going to start early on supper today and make it like your mother used to make it. Is there anything else you would like to eat?”
“Please sit down, Daddy. There is something else.”
He sat down at the table. I removed another index card from my backpack and looked at it. There was an address and a name written in the same handwriting as the poem. The address read 123 Baker Lane, White Plains, New York and the name of Nicholas Piper.”
“Who wrote the note in the poem for you?” He asked me. He didn’t expect a reply and he was surprised when I answered. “My teacher wrote the notes.”
“Who is Nicholas Piper?” My father asked.
“My friend,” I answered. But I knew my father had learned that “my friend” could mean almost anyone. I knew he was beginning to realise that I understood a lot more than he had concluded before.
He stood up from the table and then began to prepare our dinner.
I took out my notepad and began to draw another picture. My father continued to make our dinner. He remembered how my mother used to cook the macaroni twice, bowling it first and then sautéing it in olive oil a second time. She had used three different kinds of cheese in making a sauce, cheddar, mozzarella and Gouda cheese. He shredded all three and mixed them in a bowl. It was amazing how such a simple task made him happy. He drained the macaroni in a colander. When he mixed all the ingredients together, our small kitchen was filled with the most delicate aroma. He found a glass casserole and then placed the macaroni in the oven at 400°.
“Not as good a cook as your mother. But I think I did a decent job.”
15 minutes later, he took the macaroni out of the oven and served me. He stood silently watching as I ate the macaroni. I didn’t say another word. But I smiled with the most ebullient smile my father had ever seen. When I finished my plate, I put it aside and I continue to work on my drawing.
After dinner, while I drew, my father went into the basement and came upstairs with a shoebox-sized cardboard box. He then dumped the carved wooden pieces of a new puzzle onto the tabletop in front of me. He removed a small pocket knife from the box, opened it and began to trim the pieces.
“35 pieces,” he told me. “I wonder if it is too many. I don’t know the target age for the puzzles.” He paused. “Do you want to give it a try?”
He slid the box towards me. At first, I didn’t seem to take any notice of it. I just kept drawing my picture. Then, to my father's surprise, I set aside the pad and pencil and I took the puzzle in both hands. I looked closely at the pieces and then I began to put them together. Five minutes was all the time it took and I stood the kangaroo with its joey upright on the tabletop.
“I’m impressed,” he told me. “Do you like my puzzle? I’ve been to Australia once in my life.”
“I know, Daddy. Yes. I like the puzzle.”
“Will I ever be able to have a real conversation with you?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“I look forward to them.”
I turned the kangaroo 360°. “Life is a circle,” I spoke. “One day soon you and I will go together to Australia.”
“I’m going to put our friend away for now.” He carefully picked up the puzzle and placed it in its box.
“You know your mother used to like puzzles,” he explained to me. “I am better because of a puzzle. But another story for another time.” He seemed a little nervous. “Do you know what time our visitor is coming?”
“He’s coming now, Daddy. No need to be afraid,” I spoke slowly and deliberately.
“I am not afraid,” my father responded. I knew he wasn’t afraid.
Neither of us spoke another word. Then we both sat down in the living room waiting for the visitor to arrive. The sun had begun to set and the light from the setting sun shined through the window, focusing on my drawing of my mother. The light reflecting off of my drawing produced a three-dimensional image of my mother. My father was amazed.
“How did you do this?” He asked me.
“All my drawings, Daddy, are three-dimensional.” I could see my father in the not so distant future taking a flashlight and shining it on all the drawings I had put in the house and discovering that they were all holographic. This revelation I knew would prove even harder for him to understand. But I was struggling with how I could tell him that this universe was not what he thought it was, that when I had stopped the train wreck in Phillipsburg, I didn’t just change the timeline, but I had inadvertently changed other things as well. That light was operating in a different way.
At exactly 7:15 according to the clock on the living room door, A loud knock came at the front door. Five beats in uniform rhythm in 4 x 4 time. My father stood up from his chair to open the front door.
“Any clues as to who I can expect?” he asked me. I didn’t respond.
With some reluctance, he opened the door. A man who appeared to be in his 70s with features resembling me, stood relaxed at the door.
“Do you recognise me? I can see that you think you do, Peter. Can I come inside the house?”
He was reluctant to let the stranger into his house. He felt a knot in his stomach.
“You had a sense that you knew this day would come,” he told my father. “Jonathan certainly knew.”
“Should I be afraid of you?” My father asked him.
“What a question. If you could recognise the absurdity in your question, you would be laughing.”
“Alright, please come in the house, whoever you are.”
“What is the year?” The stranger asked him. “This is the first time I’ve attempted to do something like this.”
“2001,” Jonathan answered.
“What is the year really? Do you know how many calendars are in the world today?” The stranger asked.
“There are 12 major ones and many minor ones,” I answered.
The stranger came into the living room and sat down on the sofa and my father appeared very uncomfortable.
“What do you want with my boy?” My father asked him.
“I don’t want anything with your boy, Mr Margolis. Just a few minutes of his time.”
“Who are you?” My father asked him.
“A name,” the stranger responded. “I can’t give you a name. Too many complications. I can say one thing. Don’t do anything out of the ordinary on September 11 this year. Don’t go into Manhattan. Don’t believe everything they tell you.” He paused. “There will be wars, and lies and more wars.”
He turned to me.
“I came to tell you to stop. No more interventions. No more army of goodness. Just stop, Jonathan.” The stranger pivoted. “What have you discovered, what I should’ve seen before I began my meddling, what is the powers of my adversaries. I have come to tell your son, Mr Margolis to stop.” He paused. “You save one person’s life and you inadvertently cause five others to die. I’ve seen the enemy murder those I’ve saved. Their capacity for chaos is unimaginable. As I’m sure you discovered that not everyone who has our abilities is on our side. Only God has the wisdom to meddle in the affairs of human things. Only he can see the tributary effects of everything that happens afterwards.”
“What do you want from my son?” My father again asked him.
“I want what I know Jonathan will not do, just let the dominoes fall wherever they will and just watch.” He halted a few moments. “I know when I came here that he won’t do what I ask. He can’t help himself. I could never help myself. I did so many extraordinary things. I watched the world torn apart.”
I began to speak slowly and firmly to the stranger, “It’s not your fault. It was never your fault. I know what the cost is for you to come here like this.”
He was surprised that I could speak this way and didn’t know what I meant by these words.
“You should tell him what is coming, what will happen soon,” the stranger proposed.
What my father could never have imagined was happening before his eyes. The man had come to speak to me, who had abilities that I could only imagine, who had come in a way unimaginable to anyone, who was not a stranger to me at all. My father could never have recognised that both of us were Jonathan.
“I’ve spoken my piece,” The stranger told me. “I can go back now and deal with the effects of what I have done. Thank you for your time.”
Then to my father’s surprise, the stranger just vanished in front of our eyes. I could see on my father’s face that he was totally confused by what had happened.
I told my father, “If you saw three toddlers running into a river and you knew you could barely swim, would you attempt to run in there and rescue them? If you look around you and see no one trying to rescue anyone and I have been given abilities to intervene and make things better, Could you just stand by and watch it happen?”
“No!” My father told me. “No. I would do whatever I thought I had to do to make things better.”
“And so will I.”
