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_____
This is what she knows:
- that time is elastic;
- because she has traveled between the ages of five and a hundred and five, although has only managed to reach a hundred and five less than five times;
- if she repeats this to herself five times over, it’s almost a tongue twister;
- she can change a lot in one lifetime;
- or she can change none at all, in many, many, many lifetimes;
- the choice is always hers;
- this is regardless of circumstance.
_
Gina Rose Anastasia Muramatsu was eleven years old circa 1986. Her older sister, Lucy, was sixteen, had permed hair, wore too much eyeliner and listened to her music too loud. They shared one tight bedroom in a co-op in the West Village and no matter how many times she’d bang her feet against the wall to get her to turn down the fucking Beastie Boys, Lucy would just blow her a kiss and smack her gum, “Uh, no.” In revenge, Gina would steal her favorite Ramones t-shirt and use it to dust their coffee table and bookshelves. But Lucy was nice, too, sometimes and took Gina along with her and her really cool high school friends to hold hands across America.
“We’re gonna change the world, GRA!” Lucy screamed above the din of the crowd whooping with joy.
By all accounts, it was a pretty groovy year, although no one said groovy anymore except for the Brady Bunch kids on TV, not even Gina’s very uncool parents. But Gina was too young to appreciate most of this, anyway, and it’s not until her umpteenth time around on the time loop that she meets someone who drops the word “groovy” with such sincere enthusiasm. As if groovy was still groovy.
“What a groovy mutation you have!” he’ll exclaim.
But that’s later.
_
First, she meets Sean. Not right away. Right away, at fifteen, after yet another gruesome screaming match with her alcoholic father and her too passive mother wringing her hands on standby but doing nothing else, she shaves half her head, gives her father the one finger salute good-bye, refuses to meet her crying mother’s eyes and hauls ass and her heavy backpack to St. Mark’s. By then, Lucy and her dreams had relocated to California.
Gina makes her bed on concrete, uses flattened cardboard boxes as blankets and doesn’t care that the punk twenty feet over pisses on the sidewalk. They share a needle.
That first time around, she gets AIDS, passes it to fifty other people and would have died from it if she hadn’t ejected from her hospital bed at St. Vincent’s and traveled back again to 1986. There are few mistakes she makes only once. AIDS is one of them.
_
1986 was an especially good year, an unblemished year – save for one nagging memory. She’d taken the family’s favorite board game to her class party and, on the way home, dropped some pieces – thanks to the stupid, fucking hole in her backpack. No amount of cursing, however, or tracing her steps back between the blocks from school to home turned up the missing parts. Gina was so, so sorry, she cried to her mother that night, inconsolable even after her mother promised to buy a replacement. Her mother never did and, the next year, her father started drinking one beer too many. They never played the game again.
No matter how many times Gina shoots back to 1986 and manages not to lose the board game, in the first place, or loses it, but finds the pieces later – “Rock on, GRA!” – in triumph, it doesn’t change the things that come later. Her father still drinks and they stop having dinner as a family.
She eventually gives up on the notion that she could have done something, but returns to 1986 nevertheless. If she must confess – and put a gun to her head because sappy really isn’t her thing – but, well. It was the last year she remembers loving as purely and openly as she was capable…and then never again after that.
_
Until Sean. Silly willy beanpole, the big goofball, with the pocket full of corny jokes. Too tall, too many freckles, a mad mop of flaming red hair. And unexpectedly romantic. So not her type and everything she never thought to look for.
_
“Hey, mister, got a light?”
His eyes raked over her, from the tips of her spiky faux hawk to the tips of her steel-toed boots. She doesn’t bother hiding the tracks on her arms.
“No way, you’re too young.”
This was how they met.
“You’re not gonna get arrested for lending me your Bic.”
No, she was right. Not for that. But, later, they’d argue that he could get arrested for having sex with a minor. But she was sixteen-going-on-seventeen and the NYPD had better things to do.
He changes her life. Again and again and again.
_
Xavier remarks on the “startling green hue of hazel” in her eyes the first time they meet (and each time thereafter – god, the man was predictable.) He’d clapped his hands together – “marvelous, simply marvelous” – when Sean, the imp, told him about her mutation. To demonstrate, she’d regressed back to five minutes earlier and two blocks south of the café where they would meet and bumped into Xavier at the intersection to hasten it. Well, bumped as in she’d aimed straight for him on her roller blades, wind whipping against her cheeks, and braked just short of colliding into his wheelchair. Xavier didn’t even blink, the skinny mini Buddha. “Want a peek in my membrane,” she’d said, bent at the waist. “I'm back from the future.” He did, then drew back, eyes shining. “That,” he said, voice stuffed with wonder, “is very, very groovy."
Groovy. She’d snickered. Still does.
The first time she meets Magneto and offers him a spin on her “ride,” he bares a mouthful of teeth – and that, that was a pretty groovy mutation, too.
A striking pair, the two of them, especially in a toe to wheel standoff. There were always special effects – courtesy of Magneto(TM) - like: a mélange of dirt covered metal things whizzing past their heads and collecting in isolated mini tornadoes adding to the drama.
“Not until I have your word that there will be no unnecessary deaths,” Xavier had declared, at the first duel she’d lucked out on with ringside seats, refusing to budge from the entrance of a CIA facility. His eyes had flashed fierce and, boy, was he sexy - for an old dude. “Hey there, Tony the Tiger” got her a sharp jab from Sean. Magneto, the devil in a cape, had flashed back with his scarily straight and pointy incisors.
“They’re doing it,” Gina later commented to Sean, sat on his lap and her shirt rucked up. “Wow,” he’d replied, groaning. “Mood killer.”
But they are. Or they have. They had all the tell tale signs of two people mucked up in a convoluted history that likely involved a lot of screaming, tears, desperate fucks against the wall – a bullet in the spine. And quiet. Carved out moments that were just theirs, those they could preserve only in memory, those they relied on to remind themselves when each forgot – oh, yes, it’s you.
Xavier and Magneto sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S- – Gina and Sean could have been their neighbors.
_
She refuses to join Xavier’s cause because Magneto – “is more my thing, know what I’m sayin’?” she says, with a shrug and her hands out like, yo, the thing speaks for itself, even though she won’t pledge her allegiance to him either.
Sean acts angry about it, sometimes, but he’s too mellow yellow for that. They argue for the sake of it and end up naked.
It’s more fun pretending to be star-crossed lovers, anyway, like Pyramus and Thisbe, Romeo and Juliet, Lancelot and Guenivere.
“Or Tony and Maria,” Sean supplies, twining his legs through hers. He’s a musicals junkie. Who knew?
She laughs. “Professor X and Magneto.”
Sean scrunches his nose. “Really? While we’re in bed? Again?”
“I’ve seen the pictures. They were hot back in the day.”
“No. No, no, no, no and – just. Can we go back to, I don’t know, the Jets versus the Sharks?”
“Fine.” She giggles when he sniffs into her neck and lets herself be pulled into a tighter embrace. “But – ” she loops their fingers together “ – what happened to them? You’ve never told me and it’s obvious they’re sick for each other.”
“Sick like this,” Sean says and blows raspberries against her cheek. Gina pulls a face when he’s done and makes an elaborate show of wiping spit residue off it and onto Sean’s bare chest. He waggles his eyebrows. “I like it.”
She smacks him. “Shut up. No, don’t shut up. Talk – I wanna hear about them.”
After a lengthy pause, Sean says, “They’re…complicated.”
Her parents were complicated. She wonders if that’s what he means.
_
They are like Romeo and Juliet. Sort of (not).
“Magneto just left him,” she says, incredulous.
Sean nods.
“That’s a total – ”
“Douche move?” Sean finishes. “Like if the douche move had a magic mirror and it was like ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall who’s the douchiest one of all?’ the mirror would say, ‘YOU, asshole!’ That kind of douche move?”
Corny, see? “Exactly.”
It’s decades later when even Magneto outdouches himself. And, Jesus H., she might have wished for her parents to implode with the simple power of her thoughts, once upon a time, but not really, let alone the annihilation of all of humanity.
“What a fucking dick!” Gina is standing at the foot of Xavier’s bed in the infirmary, arms crossed over her chest and Sean tucked against her side. “He left him to die, again. I mean, What. The. Fuck.”
“It really is taking break-up-to-make-up to a whole ‘nother level.” She glares at him. Sean shrugs. “I kid – ”
“Because you’re worried.” She knows this. It’s still annoying, sometimes. “How do people get to this?” It’s a piece she’s still puzzling out even after everything she’s seen and lived through. It’s like Xavier, the most powerful telepath in all of history, and yet still stupid about people. Maybe they were just meant to be the greatest mystery of life. “Do you think you and me could ever end up like – ” She gestures with her hand. Sean grabs it. “You tell me,” he says.
_
World War III isn’t nation against nation, north versus south, or east combating the west. It doesn’t involve uniforms or underdogs or right versus wrong or the status quo. There is no moral high ground and she and Sean, in this lifetime, really are star-crossed lovers. It is the only time she joins the Brotherhood. It is fucking anarchy. Everywhere.
Sean sputters blood and he clutches at her hand while Gina begs him not to leave – “No, no, no no no no…”
Not like this.
Never again.
The Divorce That Damages Decades. It should have made the cover of TIME.
_
To answer her question – yes, they can. She doesn’t need it answered more than once.
_
After Sean’s funeral, the skies are the same, black from soot and smoke and nuclear waste and chemical warfare pollution. But there are hints of blue that bruise patches of it, like hope peeking through, signaling for yet another chance.
She’s lived through Sean’s death more times now than she cares to count. It is no less painful than the time before, so wretched that she swears, each time, to travel her life to the end and be done with it. But then years pass, or months, or weeks, or minutes, like today, when the pain is unbearable and she misses him so fucking much. So she decides to bear the burden all over again, follows him back, to live forward through another of his lifetime – his, because he grows old and pathetic and his penis is useless after a time, and her heart aches from how much he’s so very, very worth it.
_
She takes another leap.
The dream she falls into is blurry, grass and leaves and spots of daisies almost dripping, almost melting into each other, like one of Monet’s masterpieces, and framing the pastel swathes of color is white space, bright and pristine.
She hears voices and walks towards them. The white space stretches until it accommodates almost the entire picture and opens to a clearing. There are two young men on a blanket, one lying on his back, arms folded beneath his head. It is just as it dawns on her, who they are, when she hears –
Professor X laughs, boisterous and a little out of control, so unlike the professor she’s come to know. She grins. It’s infectious. “Yes, well, he’s not the same young man you nearly sacrificed to the gods of gravity and poor judgment.”
Magneto smiles and looks down at the professor with an expression so familiar, one she’s seen so many times on Sean’s face when he’s looked at her – her chest clenches with it. “And he wouldn’t be who he is today if not for me.”
“Proven capable to kick your arse, you mean?”
“Something like that.” Magneto leans down, closer to the professor, and drags a finger down his nose. “So.” The professor’s smile widens. “So,” he mimics back. They say nothing again for awhile, kissing for long, long moments, simply staring at each other during the pauses between. Gina pulls a hand over her eyes. It’s like watching her parents make out.
“Will you let me today?” She peeks between her fingers and sees Magneto on his side now lying beside Xavier, one hand tugging at his belt. Oh god. Gina is about to hide behind her hand again when the professor pushes Magneto’s hand away and shakes his head. She sighs, relieved. “Charles…”
“Erik, I can’t – ” he turns away and the expression on his face causes Gina’s chest to constrict for entirely different reasons. She doesn’t ever remember seeing shame on the professor’s face. Her eyes flit and only now does she see the wheelchair on the grass, folded behind them.
“Why?” She knows from the way Magneto says it and the sigh that follows that this is an old question.
“I’m not.” The professor stops, licks his lips. Softly – “I can barely look at myself.”
“That’s because you’re looking in the wrong mirror.” Magneto catches one of Xavier’s hands as it flies up and grazes his neck, and kisses his knuckles. “Why don’t you try mine?” He tugs two of Xavier’s fingers together and places them against his temple.
“You don’t have to.”
“No. This is the very least I can give you.”
Xavier closes his eyes and she tumbles. It’s different, the rush that comes with entering Magneto’s mind, so unlike when she snaps awake from a quantum leap, like breaking through water to breath again; it is the opposite of that. It is like diving back in, dark and murky with glimmers of light. Xavier goes for the offered treasure chest and an abundance of memories spill out: a satellite dish; long road trips; chess games where neither speaks for hours; noisy, cluttered days encouraging young mutants, “You can, you can!” – oh, a baby Sean. They have shared breakfasts, sometimes in bed, and there are quiet nights where both stare at the stars when one isn’t staring at the other.
There is a hospital room, stark and pale as Xavier lying on the narrow bed. Magneto thumbs at the tired bruises under Xavier’s eyes. His mouth is shaping – both her breath and Xavier’s stutter. Sorry sorry sorry. Magneto leaves before Xavier wakes and the next time they see each other the professor is in a wheelchair.
Xavier is beautiful and whole and the same in Magneto’s mind and ::don’t you see:: echoes in the chambers of his heart. It is the thing that pulses, that no one word, no picture, no memory can speak enough for. But when it threads together with Gina’s memories of them, everything makes sense. She can’t separate anymore who it belongs to and realizes it exists for both separately – the love that each has for the other and the love that stands independently, between them.
Nothing ever destroys it, she knows, because she’s seen them both at the end of their lives, many lifetimes over, when one leaves the other first and the other is simply bereft.
They will live and die for each other, over and over and over again, at times making mistakes worse than those they’d committed before. Still, they forgive. Still, they love.
They are complicated.
_
Then again, what isn’t?
_
When Gina wakes, the memories of all of her lifetimes crash with the professor’s memories and she can’t help but see things differently. It’s like the first time she fell in love with Sean and saw a different future.
She reaches for his hand. “They’d both change things if they could.”
“You had the dream, too? He projects when he’s this ill.” It is one of the few times the X-Men willingly open their doors for the Brotherhood. Magneto is with Xavier now. She imagines him in that armchair he occupies each time he visits, elegant even when sprawled against it, mouth hanging open and lightly snoring because he refuses to leave the professor’s side until he wakes. It is the most difficult thing to reconcile, how they can be so…tender with each other. It should also be the most difficult thing to understand, but it isn’t. Gina understands it too well, and even better now.
She looks at Sean. “We could, you know.”
“What?” he says, and tucks a stray hair behind her ear.
“Change things.”
“You can’t go that far back.”
“No,” she agrees. “But you can.”
_
"You've never sent anyone back?"
She shakes her head and lights a cigarette. "Just my pet parakeet that I almost killed because I forgot to feed it." She doesn't tell him that the parakeet dies anyway, for the same reason, a month later. "Don't worry, you'll be fine."
"Who's worried?" They both are and Sean gives it away when he breaks his strict no-smoking-in-bed policy and bumps her elbow to lend him a drag. “What will I tell them?”
Gina inhales and exhales and watches the cigarette burn down to its filter before she answers. What do they need to hear? “Whatever happens, they have to stay together." She links their hands and thinks of Sean dying in her arms just days earlier. "They have to keep us united. Whatever happens. Because there is something much, much worse coming.”
“And I can’t tell them what?”
“Nope.”
“Can I say: ‘this is code for Marty McFly?’”
“Because in 1962, they’ll get that reference how?”
Sean falls silent. “Oh. Right. But, really, what would happen if I – ”
“You’ll turn back into a pumpkin, Sean, Jesus.” Beside her, he says nothing, makes no noise, but still manages to sound hurt. She sighs. “Because – because they won’t learn the lesson they’re supposed to. They have to choose." And risk it. They have to trust. "It can't be by obligation.”
“What if – ” All laughter leaves his eyes and he goes quiet and somber. “How will I convince them?”
Gina dumps her burned out cigarette into an empty soda can, then rolls up against Sean. She reaches up and cups his face. “Think of me.”
_
She sets the alarm so she can wake before Sean and when he does she watches for the slow realization that ripples over his face as his eyes take in the high ceilings, the familiar curtains billowing slightly from the breeze outside, and their robes hanging off the bed frame. The noise outside she knows he is remembering is not an echo of the noise from many yesteryears but only from yesterday.
He turns his head to look at her and smiles. “Hello, there.”
“Hello.” She pecks him on the lips. “Welcome back.”
She concentrates. Professor?
Gina! Are you and Sean awake?
He is the happiest she has ever heard him. Bright-eyed and bushy tailed.
Well, you better hurry down then, before all the coffee is gone. You know how Erik is – the early bird catches the worm and all that strict melodrama. He fades out for a moment and returns. He’s sniping at me for saving you and Sean a cup each.
Gina laughs. We’ll be right down.