Once Upon a Time at the Oakmont

On the island of Manhattan, there’s a building out of time. I can’t tell you where it is, exactly. It has an address, of course, as all buildings do, but that wouldn’t mean anything to you. What I can tell you is that the building is called The Oakmont.

“The sun’s out and there isn’t a cloud in the sky. It’s a perfect summer day. The street’s filled with a steady stream of cars and people. There’s a busker on the corner—do they have buskers in your time? He’s drumming on a plastic bucket with his hands and feet.”

“He’s too far to hear, but he must be. People are giving him money. Paper money.”

Roger raises his eyebrows. In his time paper money isn’t something people part with easily.

He places the needle down on the record he’s selected and comes over to the window to stand next to me as Billie Holliday sings, “Summertime.” I quietly hum along.

“There’s a newsboy across the street,” he says. “He’s calling something out to some pretty girls. The girls keep walking. They aren’t interested. Behind the kid, a man’s putting up a poster promoting Defense Bonds.”

I glance down at the newspaper that lies folded on Roger’s coffee table, no doubt purchased this morning from that same newsboy. The front-page story’s about the war, but I know it’ll still be a few months before America joins the fight. Still, the worry settles into my stomach. The attack on Pearl Harbor’s coming. It happens in December. I can’t tell Roger that, though.

There are rules at The Oakmont. The first, and arguably most important, is that residents are not permitted to share information about the future with other residents existing in their past that could influence the course of their lives. Residents also may not visit the apartments of those living beyond their own time, though the reverse is allowed.

I walk over to the record player and apologize to Lady Day as I lift the needle off her record and replace it with a different one. This one bends The Oakmont rules a little, since it’s technically from my time, and the song I’m choosing won’t be released for a few years yet in Roger’s time. But this isn’t the first rule Roger and I have bent during our time together. I find the correct groove, knowing it by heart by now, and carefully place the needle down. Glenn Miller and His Orchestra play our song, “Moonlight Serenade.”

I hold my hand out and Roger comes over to take it. We dance like we have so many times before. I think of that first time when we met, a few months ago in early Spring, and feel myself transported there. Maybe I am transported. Time, after all, moves differently at The Oakmont.

Once a month, spring thru fall, Mr. Thomas hosts a movie night on the rooftop of The Oakmont. Although to him they’re moving pictures. In his time Mr. Thomas runs a theater where silent films are screened. Here, he uses an old bedsheet for a screen, but the projector’s real—taken from his theater when they upgraded. There’s also a piano that’s stored in a sort of shed he built. The walls open on hinges for full sound as he plays along with the films.

Today’s movie is Safety Last, starring Harold Lloyd. A personal favorite of mine, despite the film having been released before even my grandparents were born.

The film won’t start until it’s truly dark, though. First there’s the traditional potluck dinner. I glance down at the table at foods from every era. On one end Depression cake sits next to aspic. The other end holds a silver fondue pot. Just beyond that’s the grocery store sushi platter I brought. There are no rules about food at The Oakmont. There is, however, an unspoken rule when we interact with residents from other times.

There are things you just accept when you live here. You don’t question what’s normal for other residents. You don’t comment on their clothing or hairstyle, for instance. At least not to point it out as unusual. It’s understood that things like appearance—and, yes, even food—are a product of their time.

On this evening, I’ve set up an easel and brought up my oils. As people arrive, I paint them standing around the table, chatting. I’ve already included Mr. Thomas and the building manager, Ms. Knox, as well as a handful of others. Front and center are my closest friends, Linda from 1975 and Don from 1969.

There may be others here too, but The Oakmont has its secrets. Just as we don’t all perceive the view from the rooftop in the same way, there are residents here we may not be aware of and who in turn may not be aware of us. Only Ms. Knox interacts with everyone.

Of the residents I see regularly, the only one missing is Harrison, the odd loaner who lives next door to me in apartment 2055, but he never comes to movie nights.

There’s a number on the door of each apartment in The Oakmont. The number corresponds to the year the resident exists in. This number may change as time passes, but the residents don’t notice such things.

I put the finishing touches on my painting and lean the canvas forward to pencil in the title on the back of the frame: “The Gang at The Oakmont.” When I rest it back against the easel, I notice a figure I don’t recognize and don’t remember painting. I look over to the edge of the rooftop, where he stands smoking a cigarette. He wears a fedora, cocked ever-so-slightly to one side, and a jacket and tie over a shirt and slacks. A casual look for another era but coming from the twenty-twenties he looks dressed-up to me. They sure don’t make ’em like they used to, I think.

It’s been a while since there was a new face at The Oakmont. Someone must’ve received their eviction notice. It happens. Sooner or later, one will find its way under each of our doors. That’s understood.

I remove my smock and check my reflection on the side of the fondue pot to make sure there’s no paint on me, then head over to introduce myself, feeling a little underdressed in jeans and a t-shirt. That’s how Roger and I first meet.

He says he’s from the early forties. I tell him when I’m from. The connection’s instant and powerful. We talk like we’ve known each other for years. Later we sit next to each other, laughing as Harold Lloyd dangles over the city from the face of an enormous clock. After everyone else has left, we dance for the first time. On this occasion I only hum, “Moonlight Serenade.” I suppose it’s the look of him that makes me choose that song. As we dance, he describes the view of New York as he sees it. I lean my head against his shoulder and try to picture what he tells me.

The Oakmont was built over a time vortex. No one knows how long it has stood on this spot. There’s no record of its construction or design. The building’s architectural style is timeless, naturally. Its façade appears neither new nor weathered. The residents of The Oakmont can’t even be certain the way they see the building is the same way others do.

Late in July, Don invites Linda and me over to watch the Apollo 11 moon landing. Linda watched it back when she was nineteen. For Don it’s the first time. I’ve seen it on TV and YouTube many times over my life, but tonight we’re in Don’s apartment, where it’s actually July 20, 1969, so we’ll be watching it live on his TV. I would love to have shared this moment with Roger, but The Oakmont rules are in place for our own good. I did slip a note under Harrison’s door inviting him to join us, but I never heard back.

I show up late, as usual. Linda’s clearly been here a while. The scent of pot they smoked earlier still lingers in the air, and their first questions to me are about snacks. I dump out the bag I’ve brought on Don’s couch. Everything I could find that didn’t exist in their respective times: key lime-flavored licorice, ruby chocolate, chips made from every root vegetable but potatoes.

“Did you get my Coke Zero?” Don asks, rummaging through the pile of goodies.

“Oh shoot! I forgot. There was this old lady in the aisle who started talking to me about the ridiculous price of grapes, and I guess I got distracted.”

“Classic Sarah,” Linda says. “Born too late, it seems. Can’t resist anyone old. Is that why all your friends are from the twentieth century?”

“Technically, I’m from the twentieth, too,” I say. “Just made it at the tail end. Maybe that’s why my neighbor keeps avoiding me. Not twenty-first century enough for him.”

They shrug and I find myself wondering if they simply haven’t met him, or if they just don’t perceive him. That happens at The Oakmont. It’s even more common when you’re talking about non-residents.

Take Linda; she works at a roller rink teaching roller disco dancing to bored housewives. The rink is owned by her boyfriend, who I know she’s mentioned many times, but I can’t for the life of me recall his name. I don’t even know if we’ve met before. All I know is in my time Roller Palace is long gone. It’s a Chinese buffet now that offers a killer dim sum service on Sundays. Every time I go, I’m tempted to pull up a corner of the carpeting to see if the rink floor’s still there. They kept the disco ball, after all.

People who reside outside The Oakmont may visit, but their experience is limited. They see only what pertains to their time. Should they encounter residents from other time periods, they’re left only with a vague impression there were people there, but they couldn’t begin to describe them. The perception—or lack thereof—is often mutual.

“Anyway, I think it’s sweet you talk to little old ladies,” Don says. “You can never know if you’re the only person a lonely stranger might see that day. Kindness costs nothing.”

“Wow, you are such a hippie, Don,” Linda tells him, before turning to me and adding, “Speaking of all things ancient, how’s Roger?”

I’m about to respond when Don shushes us and points to the TV. We watch Neil Armstrong descend the ladder, describing the surface of the moon as he does. I’m unexpectedly emotional, watching it happen live. He says those iconic words and tears roll down my face. Don and Linda see and burst into renewed laughter. Linda throws a beet chip at me.

“Oh, shut up! You guys just don’t get it.” Then I start laughing too as I wipe the tears away.

They both perceive Roger, which is nice since we’ve been together for almost four months now. I tell them things are going great, and they are. He’s an old-fashioned guy, the kind that shows up to dates with flowers and slips handwritten love notes under my door. I love his little 1940s quirks that would be so out-of-place in my time, like the way his hair’s always Brylcreemed and flawlessly parted to one side, or how he takes his hat off when sharing the elevator with a lady, and how when his shoes get worn, he gets them repaired rather than buy new ones. I love that when I get emotional, he hands me a real cloth handkerchief from his pocket.

“More like between the sheets,” she says with a wink to Don. But Don’s looking at me with the kind of serious expression that only comes from the best marijuana strains.

“What’s wrong, Sarah?” he asks. “I can tell something’s on your mind.”

I hesitate, not wanting to bring this subject up with him, of all people, but with both of them waiting I have no choice but to continue.

“It’s the war. It’s coming and I’m worried about what that’ll mean for Roger. I hate not being able to warn him.”

Don gives a single, almost solemn, nod. He gets it, what with his own war to worry about. So far, he’s avoided it, but he knows it’s just a matter of time before they start drafting. I know he has his fears about having to go to Vietnam. Fears I have no way to assuage.

There are rules at The Oakmont. One is that residents may not research prior history in order to discover what became of a fellow resident who exists in a time prior to their own.

“Maybe you should just tell him,” Don says. “Tell him about all of it. How Japan bombs Pearl, but also how we retaliate. Tell him about dropping Fat Man and Little Boy. Tell him about the devastation that causes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tell him about the camps, but also tell him how no one ever really wins a war, so it’s pointless to keep fighting them.”

His eyes dampen as he speaks, though he chants similar words in protest almost daily.

I nod in agreement, but we both know I won’t say any of that to Roger. It wouldn’t matter if I did. War is seen through different eyes in 1941. In 1945 our country will celebrate Allied victory for two whole days. The roar of celebration will go on for twenty minutes after the announcement’s made. A sailor will grab an unsuspecting nurse and plant a kiss on her in the middle of the street, and Alfred Eisenstaedt will capture it for LIFE magazine. It’s not the same kind of thing Don’s staring down the barrel of, and we both know it.

Before the end of the year, we stop seeing Don. He leaves a note with Ms. Knox letting us know he’s gone to Canada ahead of the draft. The Oakmont’s not the same without him.

December 7 comes so fast it’s like a blink, but time moves differently at The Oakmont. I knock on Roger’s door that day, but there’s no answer. As I walk along the hallway back to the elevator, I’m filled with an irrational desire to knock on every door I pass. I want to see another human being—anyone at all—and tell them that in 1941 the country has entered World War II. I want to tell them I’m afraid for the love of my life. I want to see if any of them have phones that will reach his time so I can call and ask if he’s okay.

I pick a door at random and pound my fists against it, crying in frustration. But no one comes.

There are many doors inside The Oakmont that won’t open and corridors down which a resident can’t turn. The Oakmont allows us to see who and what we need to, nothing more. The Oakmont guards its secrets.

Several days pass before I see Roger again. When I do, he seems distracted, his mind elsewhere. I note the stress in his eyes. He avoids talk of what happened, and I don’t press. Instead, he speaks of his sister, Betty, who plans to enter the workforce as a telephone operator.

“I’m not sure this is the time,” he says. “Why does she need to work anyway?”

“Working women will become increasingly common in the years to come,” I say, refraining from mention that as men go off to fight in World War II there’ll be a boom as millions of women take their places. “I have a job myself, remember?”

“But how does it work for families?” he asks. “Who raises the children and manages the home?”

I smile. You have to accept this kind of thing when you’re a resident of The Oakmont. Times are different, and each one has its own set of values and attitudes that will inevitably become obsolete as the sands of time continue to fall. We must consider the source and share our varied points of view with the goal of finding common ground, especially with those we love.

“Families find ways to make it work,” I say. “Ideally, both parents share responsibilities. That is, in households with two parents. I can’t say how single parents manage, but they do. I imagine they found ways to do so even in your time.”

He nods, and we sit in silence as the elephant in the room that is the Second World War looms large over everything.

Roger does his best to keep the mood light when we celebrate Christmas. He hangs mistletoe over his door and kisses me deeply when I arrive. On the radio, Bing Crosby sings, “Silent Night.” He’s even cut down a real tree and hung vintage ornaments from its branches. Well, vintage to me, anyway. Beneath the tree there’s a small package wrapped in plain paper with a simple red ribbon around it. I assume it’s for me, and I place the one I brought for him next to it. Mine looks so garish in its cartoon reindeer wrapping and iridescent silver bow. Roger can’t help laughing when he sees it.

I ask about his sister, and he tells me she got the job at the phone company. I tell him I’m glad and that I wish her well.
“That reminds me; she baked cookies.”

He grabs a tin from atop his fridge, opens it and offers me one. I take a bite and can’t help uttering a long “mmmm” as the flavor fills my mouth.

“That’s not true. I make a mean root beer ham. Mind you, it’s just a cooked ham I put in my slow cooker and pour a can of soda over.”

He doesn’t bother to ask what a slow cooker is. I guess the name says it all. He’s aware of some of the magical appliances I have. Well, magical to me. To him they seem wasteful—lazy even. “Why would any one household need more than one television?” he asked once. I didn’t really know how to respond to that. I think he’d have to admit my cell phone’s pretty cool though, with all the uses it has, but cell phones are strictly forbidden in apartments with numbers earlier than the mid-seventies.

We have some eggnog by the window, and I describe the Christmas lights that decorate the city in my time. New York is alive and festive in December 2023. In 1941, I gather, things are a bit more subdued.

Afterwards, we open our gifts. Always the gentleman, he insists I go first. I pull the ribbon and paper off the box and smile when I see the handkerchief.

“It’s beautiful,” I say. And it is. I’ve never owned anything like it. The fabric is cotton, I think, but the edges are hand-embroidered with violets, which he knows are the flower for my birth month. On one corner are my initials. I run my finger over them, turning the fabric over to marvel at the quality of the stitching. Machines are good, but not like this.

He opens my gift next, and I wait on the edge of my seat to see his face. Carefully setting the reindeer paper aside, he holds up the canvas and stares at it a moment before looking at me. I can’t help it; I burst into laughter.

I look down at the painting I made for him. A painting of a single can of Campbell’s tomato soup. It’s an obvious rip-off, at least to those of us born after pop art became a thing. Roger shakes his head and laughs.

Years from now—for him at least—an artist named Warhol will paint a much better rendition of this very can. The punchline to my joke will land then. I wish I could be there to see his face when it does.

“I love it,” he says. There’s so much about me he doesn’t understand, and yet he still feels this way.

Residents of The Oakmont know there are things you must simply accept while living here, and questions you don’t ask, at least not with any expectation of their being answered.

Roger places the painting on his mantle. It actually looks good there. He stands admiring it for a while—or maybe asking himself, why a can of soup? I come up behind him to wrap him in an embrace and kiss him between the shoulder blades as he places a hand on mine. Then he exhales deeply, and I know immediately what’s coming.

“There’s no rush,” I say. “The war goes on for years, and they won’t draft until next. You don’t have to decide now.”

“I know this isn’t what you want, but I’ve given it a lot of thought. They’re looking for able-bodied men. Our freedoms are at stake—and those of our allies. I can’t just sit this one out.”

He says nothing more. There’s no need. I know the man he is, and that this is exactly the kind of thing he’d do. It’s why I’ve worried for months that this moment would come. I know better than to argue, so I simply nod.

Later we fall into bed as we have countless times before, but somehow this feels different. Time seems to linger as we make love, as if stretching out our time together.

Just days later he goes to volunteer, and I walk him to the door. The main entrance to The Oakmont is a peculiar place. There’s a lobby with a revolving door that looks just like the many such doors you’ll find across the city. When you walk through this one, though, where you end up depends on who you are. Or should I say, when you end up. Even if Roger and I were to walk through together, holding hands, we’d still each step out alone into our own time.

He kisses me once, sweetly, then puts his hat on and gives me a smile. I return one as best I can. When he turns to go, part of me wants to run after him, but I stay and watch as he spins through the entrance, then vanishes into thin air.

I reach into my pocket, pull my new handkerchief out, and use it to wipe the tears.

When Roger ships out, I can’t see him off. That happens long before I’m born. To take my mind off things, Linda asks me over to her place. We talk about movies, and in my frazzled state I let slip a Star Wars reference, though it’ll still be another year before it comes out in her time. Luckily, she doesn’t notice.

New Years Eve came and went without much fanfare. I’ve felt numb ever since Roger said he was going to war. It’s 2024 and 1942 where we are. Time marches on whatever the decade and no matter how much we might want to slow things down.

“Anyway, he’s thinking of selling Roller Palace,” Linda’s saying, and I realize I’ve missed her boyfriend’s name yet again. “Where the hell does that leave me?”

Her eyes widen with expectation, but I give her nothing more. She shakes her head, disappointed.

I hang out a while longer but call it an early night. When I get back to my apartment there’s an envelope sticking out from under the door. It’s yellowed with age and has no stamp or postmark. The mailing address reads only: Sarah – The Oakmont. I recognize the handwriting immediately.

Before I’m even through the door, I’ve torn it open, the scent of old paper contrasting with the anticipation of fresh news from the front.

Roger tells me of the time since he left, mentioning some of the guys he’s befriended—two of them New Yorkers like us. Neither has heard of The Oakmont, and Roger can’t seem to recall its location for them.

The letter goes on to say how much he misses me and how he thinks of me often. He wishes he could’ve brought a picture of me, but the modern look of all the ones I had would’ve invited curious looks in 1942.

By the time I’m done reading I’m both laughing and crying. Pressing the letter to my chest, I try to feel him there with me, through time and space. I have no idea how this letter reached me, but Roger’s generation was nothing if not resourceful. Dancing alone in my living room humming, “Moonlight Serenade,” I send him all my love and hope it somehow find its way to him, too.

Letters continue to arrive, one each week. They’re always slipped under my door and yellowed from the passage of time. I suspect they’re delivered by Ms. Knox when she knows I’m not around.

There’s so much Roger isn’t able to share with me, so he mostly reminisces about our time at The Oakmont. He wonders what picture Mr. Thomas will be showing when he starts our movie nights back up. I want to tell him it’s Buster Keaton in Seven Chances, but I have no way to write him. In any case, I might not go. It’s not the same without Roger sitting next to me.

Then a week goes by with no letter. Nor is there one the following week. A month passes with the worst scenarios running through my mind until I can’t take it. I break the rules—not a little this time, but fully. I open up my laptop and Google his name, and any other information I have on his military service.

There are results, of course, but they’re of other Rogers and other wars. There’s nothing to tell me what happened to my Roger.

I look up every Army database I can and search for someone to contact for answers. I call in sick to work and spend the next two days calling everyone I can. The responses are always the same. There’s no record of Roger. Things get misfiled. There was a flood in the fifties, or a fire in the eighties. The explanations are irrelevant. They all mean the same thing: that I have no idea what’s happened to Roger.

I can think of only one person that might have the answers I so desperately need.

Ms. Knox has been the building manager of The Oakmont for time immemorial. If you ask the residents what she’s like, you’ll find the descriptions vary enormously. Some will say she’s a young, attractive brunette with a fondness for hats; others will swear she’s ancient, bone thin, and always smells of cinnamon. Still others will tell you Knox is, in fact, an unusually tall man with an Australian accent. All are correct.

I knock perhaps a little too hard on Ms. Knox’s door, but she seems not to have noticed when she opens it and offers me a gracious smile. I’m invited in and offered tea, which I accept more out of distraction that any real desire.

I blurt out my confession as she holds a sugar cube in a set of tiny tongs over my cup.

I blink, waiting for . . . something else. Some admonishment maybe. Or perhaps a threat of eviction. She sits across from me then and exhales before speaking.

“The rules are in place for your own good. Has breaking this one brought you any measure of peace? Has it returned Roger to you?”

“You want me to do that, then.” She sips from her cup. “You want me to tell you whether or not Roger survives the war.”

“There are questions you just don’t ask at The Oakmont,” she reminds me. “You don’t ask them because they can’t be answered. Only time can give you the answers you seek.”

“Time,” I repeat. “Time is a thing you dangle from precariously as the city moves on below you.”

“Mr. Thomas and his moving pictures,” she says with a laugh. “Do you want to know what time really is?”

“Time is nothing . . . and everything. It doesn’t actually exist, because we made it up, but if it did exist, it wouldn’t run in a line; it would run in a circle.”

Ms. Knox reaches into her blouse and pulls out a ring on a chain. She spins it one way, then the other.

“Time moves differently at The Oakmont. We can touch it at any point in time or at all points at once.” She demonstrates by tapping the ring at various points before placing it onto one of her fingers. “Time can pass you by and leave you virtually untouched, or it can fall on you like a cascade.”

“There’s no fighting it,” she says. “It’s like swimming against the current. Better to give in, relax, and let the waves carry you to shore.”

She tucks the ring back into her blouse and takes another loud sip from her cup. I stare down into mine, searching for answers but knowing there are none to be found here.

Without another word, I stand and head back out to the hall. She makes no move to stop me. I’m so numb I don’t even consciously move through the building and only notice I’ve reached my door when it fails to open for me. I try the key again and again and finally burst into tears. Ms. Knox has locked me out somehow—punishment for breaking the rules.

I don’t recognize the voice, so I look up and see my neighbor, Harrison, standing by his open door. I think it’s maybe the second thing he’s ever said to me in all the time he’s lived here.

He comes over and takes a look, then removes and reinserts the key before turning it. The door unlocks and he pushes it open.

I feel like an idiot. No wonder this guy has wanted nothing to do with me. I continue to cry even while thanking him, and as I start to walk past him to enter my apartment, he stops me and gives me a hug. It’s uncharacteristic, especially in a city like New York, but I give into it—the way Ms. Knox said I should surrender to time. Through sobs I tell this stranger everything, from the moment Roger and I first met and fell in love, to the letters that arrived at my door so mysteriously, then stopped coming at all.

He listens to all of it in silence with a patience I envy. Then he does the unthinkable and invites me to join him in his apartment.

I don’t trust easily, but something about Harrison feels safe. I follow him to his door, rules be damned, and step behind him into 2056.
The apartment doesn’t look too different from my own. You expect there to be major changes from one era to another, but ultimately a chair’s still a chair and a lamp’s still a lamp. Apartments look pretty much the same, and New York rent’s probably way too steep in every time.

Leaving me standing by the door, he heads into his bedroom, returning a moment later with a shoebox. He removes the lid as he approaches, and I don’t understand what I’m looking at. Inside there’s . . . nothing.

“My mother used to live at The Oakmont, though I didn’t always know that. I never met my father, but when I moved out, she gave me this box and told me it contained something that was his. She said he’d left it for me, with instructions that she give it to me when I got my own place.”

“When I opened the box, I found a bunch of letters. All of them looked old, but the one on top was the only one with my name on it, so I opened it. The letter was from my parents, written when Mom was pregnant. That’s how I learned she’d lived here too. They both had. Everything I’d known about them up until that point was, if not a lie, then certainly incomplete. My mother would’ve told me the truth, had she been able to, but . . . ”

Residence at The Oakmont is a temporary affair. Those who live here only do so when the time is right, and when that time passes, they are evicted. Those who are evicted will find their memories of The Oakmont—and those they knew there—are fleeting, and just out of reach; like a word on the tip of your tongue you can never quite recall. At times, they may sense its existence. They may even search for it, never quite knowing what they’re searching for, but you can only find The Oakmont when it wants to be found.

Harrison nods. “By then I’d read the contract you sign when you move in, and I understood. In any case, the letter explained everything. How they’d met, their time together, how he’d gone off to war, all the way through to her eviction. The other letters were ones my father had written my mother during the war. In the letter to me, he said he’d resealed them in new envelopes and gave me specific instructions as to what I should do with them, and when.”

I’m at a loss for words as he tells me this. I see it now, as I let my gaze fall over him. The flecks of green in his eyes, so like Roger’s. The same unruly waves that drive me crazy in my own hair. This was why he’d avoided me. He’d known that if I looked at him—if I really looked—I’d see and I would know.

“It was you,” I say. “I thought it was Ms. Knox who kept slipping the letters under my door.”

My gaze then falls on the artwork that hangs above his mantle. It’s the one I painted a year ago—or maybe decades ago: “The gang at the Oakmont.”

“What I don’t understand,” he says, “is why you were evicted. I know it’s just something that happens here, sooner or later, but I thought there’d be an explanation for why it happened when it did.”

I smile, then burst into tears again. He looks concerned for a moment, but I start laughing. Relief washes over me and I clasp my hands and raise them to my face a moment before I regain some composure.

The Oakmont is an adult-only living environment. You won’t find children or families among its residents. There are couples on occasion, but for the most part residents live alone. Children are lovely, to be sure, but their futures are too uncertain and their pasts too meager. They’re as yet too resistant to the push and pull of time. Children also have great difficulty following rules, and there are of course, many rules at The Oakmont.

“This is great. This is unbelievable!” I tell him and wrap him in the tightest hug I can muster.

“Don’t you see? I’m not pregnant now. That means I must get pregnant later, or you wouldn’t be here. Which means Roger survives the war!”

He smiles an uncertain, lopsided smile as I jump up and down still hugging him. After a while he gives in to my joy and we both laugh and cry, and for the first time ever, Harrison accepts my invitation to join me for dinner. There are so many questions I want to ask that I know he can’t answer, so instead I let him ask questions of his own. We talk long into the night, and when we’re done, I describe to him my view out the window, and he tells me what it looks like in 2056.

Roger returns a little over a month later, walking with a cane. I’m just glad he’s alive and back in my arms. We’re shy around each other at first, until we’re not, and then we’re back in his bed, just like old times.

The war continues where he is, but he’s done his part. I break the rules and tell him how it ends so he’s not surprised when the day finally comes. In early September 1945—or 2027, depending on your point of view—we celebrate the occasion in our own way and conceive our son.

I discover I’m pregnant as soon as I return to my apartment, where I find an eviction notice slipped under my door.

When I tell Roger both the good news and bad, we cry tears of joy and sadness, and afterward he plays, “Moonlight Serenade,” and we dance one more time.

“I’m going to miss this,” I say. “In my time no one who isn’t a professional really knows how to dance anymore. At least with you leading I stood a chance at a few decent steps.”

He kisses my forehead. “That would never work. You’d be a child or at most a young woman. I’d be an old man.”

“It’ll be alright,” he says. “I don’t think this is necessarily the end for us. After all, time moves differently at The Oakmont.”

I don’t know what he means by that, but I do know that in The Oakmont there are questions you don’t ask.

I’m big as a house, waddling down the aisles of my local grocery store in search of the newborn diapers that match my coupon.

“My goodness,” says a voice with geriatric lilt. “You’re close to bursting.”

I have one of those faces, where older strangers feel comfortable talking to me. I stop and offer her a smile.

“Honey, in your condition you should be home resting. Let the baby’s father do the running around.”

“Oh, it’s just the two of us,” I say, rubbing my belly. “That’s why I’m here hunting down diapers.”

There’s something in that wink that seems familiar, and I’m about to ask if we’ve spoken before when my eye falls on a keychain clipped to her purse strap. A keychain in the shape of a roller skate.

It all comes back in a rush of memory. I see through her aged features to the youthful ones I once knew, and with them all my other memories of The Oakmont return. In that moment I see the same recognition in Linda’s aged eyes. She smiles and winks once more.

I’m about to answer when it hits me that somewhere back at The Oakmont there’s a younger Linda, living in the seventies. If Linda can be in both places, in two different times, what’s to stop her from more? What’s to stop any of us?

I think of Ms. Knox and her ring, speaking about touching time at multiple points or all of them at once. I think of all those doors at The Oakmont that never opened for me. At least not the me I was then, at that time. Maybe somewhere behind one of those doors there’s another Sarah, with another Roger, and with them all our old friends. Maybe it’s movie night and we’re standing around the potluck table waiting for Mr. Thomas to start the film.

The announcement over the store speakers jars me out of my thoughts. I feel like I was somewhere else just now, but the memory’s faded. The elderly lady in front of me seems confused, then shakes her head as she remembers what we were talking about.

You won’t find The Oakmont on any maps, in any time. You don’t find it; it finds you. You’ll be living your life, happy as can be, then one day you’ll come across an advertisement for an apartment for rent. The ad might be online, or on a bulletin board, or in a newspaper, it makes no difference. What matters is The Oakmont will call to you when it’s your time. It will offer just what you’re looking for: a neighborhood close to work or the subway, stunning views of the skyline maybe, or rent control. Whatever the draw, you’ll know then and there you’ve found your home, and you’ll soon find yourself in Ms. Knox’s office, signing your name just below the list of rules.

P.A. Cornell is a Chilean-Canadian author who wrote her first speculative story when she was just eight years old (a science fiction piece about shape-shifting aliens.) A member of SFWA and graduate of the Odyssey workshop, her short fiction has appeared in multiple genre markets and anthologies. Her story, “Splits,” went on to win Canada’s 2022 Short Works Prize for Fiction. That same year, she published her debut science fiction novella, Lost Cargo. When not writing, Cornell can be found assembling intricate Lego builds or drinking ridiculous quantities of tea. Sometimes both. For more on the author and her work, visit her website pacornell.com.

Once Upon a Time at the Oakmont

P.A. Cornell | 7204 words