Life on Another Planet Ch. 14-18

"Good. Let's go, then," Jesse said enthusiastically.

"Slow down, Jesse. I've got to make arrangements for some time off, and for Mica to have someone to care for him. He will be off school the month of April, so I'd like to get this all done before then. That only leaves us three weeks. I'm sure I can get flights and a hotel reservation, and I'll soon know about the other things."

Jesse was frustrated that it would take time before they could leave for Arizona, but understood it wasn't just as simple as packing up and taking off. He didn't like the delay, but he'd waited this long, so he steeled himself to wait just a little longer.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012 4pm Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport

"There's our luggage," Jesse said excitedly. He'd been in an anxious state all day since they left Vancouver. He kept willing the 737 forward faster, excited about meeting his sister the next day. He was also excited by his first flight in a jet aircraft. He marvelled at its power on takeoff, pushing him back in his seat.

The two had packed lightly, knowing they were scheduled back Friday afternoon. Mica was staying at the Birani's apartment, thanks to their generosity. Eve had taken a four day chunk of her holiday time for this trip and had booked them into a two-bedroom suites inn near the airport. They would use taxi services to get them from the hotel to the Desert Star Garden community. Everything was arranged except the meeting with Roberta Turner. That would be set up by Eve with a deceptive story.

~*~

"Mrs. Turner, my name is Doctor Eve Mikeska, and I'm doing to research on your family. I'm told you were originally Roberta Peterson of West Vancouver, B.C. Is that correct?"

"Yes," the woman said in a clear voice. She sounded younger than her seventy-five years, Eve thought.

"I wonder if I might meet with you briefly to discuss this project. I promise it won't take a lot of your time and then I'll be on my way. Would tomorrow be suitable?"

"Well, I don't know. What do you want to know?" she asked, sounding wary.

"I'm looking into a lost relative of mine who you might be related to. It would be a second cousin, twice removed. You may not be able to remember him, but your parents would have known about him."

"My parents are dead. I'm not sure I can be of help. Did you say you were a doctor?"

"Yes, that's right. I'm in the psychiatry department at Coast General Hospital in Vancouver. It would be really helpful if I could spend a few minutes with you."

"Well, I suppose. What about one in the afternoon?"

"That would be excellent, Mrs. Turner. Thank you so much for helping me. I'll look forward to seeing you."

"Yes ... just let the gate guard know you have an appointment with me. I'll call them. How do you spell your name?"

It was awkward and difficult to convince the woman she was sincere, but at least Eve was able to get the appointment. That would give them two hours to talk to her. Eve felt relief as she hung up the phone.

"You heard that?" she asked Jesse.

"Yes. One o'clock tomorrow afternoon. My stomach is in a knot. I don't know how I'm going to be when I see her again. I hope I can keep my cool," he said.

"Don't get too worked up, Jesse. Let me do the talking at first. She will probably recognize you, but I'm guessing you won't recognize her. She will have aged quite a bit from the last time you saw her.

Jesse nodded silently. He knew this meeting wasn't going to be easy.

Thursday, March 22, 2012 1pm Desert Star Gardens Social Center

Roberta Turner had been very cautious, choosing to meet Eve at the social center where there would be other people nearby. Eve understood her strategy, thinking she was a wise woman, taking no chances on a stranger.

Roberta rose to meet Eve as she approached the woman. "Mrs. Turner, I'm Doctor Eve Mikeska. Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me.

"May I see some identification, please," an uncertain Roberta requested.

"Of course," Eve said immediately, reaching into her purse. "This is my passport, and my security card at the hospital. Will that suffice?"

Roberta examined both cards carefully before handing them back. "I'm just being careful, Doctor."

"I understand completely," Eve said, "and please call me Eve."

The older woman nodded and smiled.

"There's someone I want you to meet," Eve said, turning toward the large windows looking out over the well-tended lawn and gardens.

Jesse saw Eve raise her hand toward him and knew he was to approach his long-lost sister. Roberta turned to see who she was signalling. She looked at the young man for no more that two seconds before her mouth opened, her eyes went wide, and she brought her hand up over her mouth in shock.

"Hello, Roberta. It's been a long time. I know it's a surprise to see me, your pain-in-the-butt brother," he smiled.

Roberta was speechless for several moments before she turned to Eve. "Is this some kind of trick? Is this boy a double for my late brother?"

Eve was shaking her head. "Can we find a place to talk in private and I can explain the situation ... if it can be explained?"

Roberta was still in shock and Jesse stood quietly waiting for something to happen. The woman didn't look anything like the sister he remembered. She was tall and slim, just as Roberta had been, but the grey hair, aged face and typical wrinkles changed her appearance dramatically.

Roberta finally gathered herself and pointed toward a room off to the side. "We won't be bothered in there," she said, staring at Jesse.

"You said you were my 'pain-in-the-butt brother,'" she began as they sat around a small, round coffee table. "What did you mean?"

Jesse chuckled. "Until you left home to work in Toronto, you were stuck with babysitting me when Mom and Dad went out anywhere ... at least until I was fourteen. By that time, you were already in nursing school and had chosen a career."

"How do you know that?" she asked, still confused.

"Roberta ... I am your brother. I know it's impossible for you to believe, but it's true. Eve can explain it better than I can. She's my guardian and saved my life when I had no one," he said in a low, earnest, tone.

Roberta turned to Eve with a questioning look.

"This will be hard for you to accept, but Jesse was found sleeping on a bus stop bench near Stanley Park in early July of last year. He was wearing nothing but an old fashioned pair of flannel pyjamas. No shoes, no identification of any kind. He was in a mild coma from some sort of brain infection, but we were never able to identify it. He woke days later, apparently with no after affects from this disorder. I was called in to consult when the information he gave us about his address and parents' name didn't bring up any results.

"That's when he began to realize he had skipped forward fifty years from when he became ill to when he woke. I realize there is no rational explanation for what happened to him, but I have tested Jesse every way I can think of to find out how this could have happened and I've come up empty. He is a phenomenon that cannot be explained."

Roberta was listening intently to Eve as she explained the background to Jesse's appearance.

"My concern," Eve continued, "was his mental state when he discovered his parents and grandparents were deceased, and that you were not easily traced. He had no one, and was living in a strange environment that bore little resemblance to the era he came from. He had to learn how to cope. I knew we couldn't just release him out into the general population. He wasn't equipped to deal with that yet. I decided to take him into my home as his guardian until he was ready to be on his own. I guess you could say I became his surrogate mother."

Roberta had trouble digesting all this. She looked bewildered and confused, and kept glancing at Jesse.

"I don't know how I can begin to believe all this," Roberta said slowly.

"Roberta, Jesse has nothing from his past. I was hoping you would have pictures of your parents, yourself, perhaps his grandparents and his friends. He needs something to give him grounding as he tries to adapt to a world he doesn't yet completely understand."

"Yes, yes ... of course. In fact, it would be a way to confirm who he is. If as you say, he's got nothing, then if he can identify various people in my albums, it would help me believe he is who you say he is. Why don't we go to my home and I'll bring out the photo albums that my parents passed along to me."

~*~

"Hey, that's Black Jack and Terry," Jesse said with glee as he looked at the photo. He'd wept quietly at the pictures of his mother and father, both sets of grandparents, and older pictures of himself and Roberta. He didn't realize his mother had kept all these pictures of him when he was just a little kid, until he was in high school. In fact, she had pictures of him at his high school graduation, just days before he had supposedly died.

Roberta sat back in her chair as she watched Jesse go through the album. There were tears in her eyes at this point.

"I don't understand how this is possible, but unless this is a very elaborate hoax, I believe you are Jesse," she sniffed.

"Roberta, you must understand that it could be dangerous for anyone else to discover Jesse's secret. We don't know how it might be taken advantage of, but I'm worried that the government would want to confine him and see if they can discover how this phenomenon occurred. You can imagine the value of a secret like that. Even if they weren't successful, they would make his life a misery and he doesn't deserve that. Can you agree?"

Roberta nodded as she wiped the tears away with a tissue.

"Yes ... I can understand. A lot of the people in this development are very suspicious of the government. They aren't as trusting as Canadians are. I suppose they have their reasons, but I would worry if the US government got wind of this. Jesse would not be safe."

"Yes ... and I hope you can understand that I don't think it's wise to tell your husband about this," Eve said. "If he asks, just tell him that he was a relative of a cousin of yours and leave it at that."

Again, Roberta nodded. "Will I see you again, Jesse?" she asked.

"Yes. I don't know when. Right now I'm studying to get into university next fall, so I'm going to be pretty busy. I have a job in a book store for now, and I play a little baseball still. But ... I'll find a way to visit you," he smiled.

"Don't leave it too long, will you? I'm no spring chicken any more," she smiled through fresh tears.

Jesse went to her and hugged her. "I'm glad I had a chance to see you, Roberta. I didn't realize how much I missed you until I knew we were coming here. I have to thank Eve for making this possible. She hired an investigator to find you, and she took time off from her job to fly me down here. We're going back tomorrow, so we'll keep in touch," he promised.

"Do you have Skype at your home?" Roberta asked.

"Yes. That's a way to stay in contact," Eve smiled.

"Good, I want to know more about you and what you are doing. We've missed fifty years of our lives somehow and I want to try and catch up," Jesse said.

"Do you live in West Vancouver still?" Roberta wondered.

"No ... Eve has a nice apartment at False Creek. I live there with her and her son, Mica. He's eleven years old."

"That's nice. You have a family around you again. That's important," Roberta smiled. "What does your husband do, Eve?"

"I'm not married. I'm a single mother with a grown-up son to help raise Mica," she smiled.

"That's quite a change for you, Jesse," Roberta said.

"It is, but I couldn't be luckier to be allowed to stay with Eve and Mica. Of all the bad things that have happened to me, she saved me and I can see a better future now. It will never be the same without Mom and Dad, but it will be better than it might have been."

Just before three o'clock, Jesse, Roberta, and Eve said their goodbyes and parted. Jesse was quiet as the taxi took them back to the hotel.

"How do you feel, Jesse?" Eve asked as they walked into the hotel lobby.

"Relieved," he answered, looking at her. "I was worried that she wouldn't believe us. I was worried that she would reject me. I was worried that she wouldn't keep our secret. I guess I was worried about nothing if I'm reading her right."

"I think so too. One of the reasons I wanted to be with you when you met was because my credentials gave us some credibility. But the clincher for Roberta was the photo album. You were naming names and remembering when and where the pictures were taken. That alone convinced her of your existence. The only thing she forgot to ask was who was it buried in your gravesite. I'm sure that will come to her, along with a number of other questions. But you've made contact with her, she's given you a bunch of pictures to keep for yourself, and she's promised to stay in touch with you. That's as much as you could hope for, I think."

"Yeah ... you're right. The pictures are the real thing, Eve. That's me and my family and my friends. They're all there for anyone to see. They're real and so are my memories. I guess I'm not crazy after all," he said with a sigh.

"You never were crazy, Jesse. We may never know how this all came about, but I can tell you as a professional psychiatrist, you were never crazy ... and now you know for sure," she smiled, placing her hand on his shoulder.

Friday, March 23, 2012 11am

Their morning flight arrived on time and they cleared customs without difficulty. As they waited for the elevator in the main floor lobby of their apartment building, a trio of familiar faces appeared as the cabin door slid open.

"Hi, Jesse, hello, Eve," Kirsten said with a big smile, greeting the two as they stepped into the now crowded cabin. Anika and Thomas repeated the greetings.

"Hi, Kirsten," Jesse smiled. "Where have you been?" he asked as he spotted her luggage and sport bag.

"Calgary," she said with a sigh. "We got knocked out of the playoffs last night."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Excuse me for being rude, Mr. and Mrs. Gustafson. Nice to see you again," Jesse said in apology.

"That's quite alright," Anika said. "Have you been away too?" she asked, eyeing their luggage.

"Yes," Eve answered quickly. "We were in Arizona briefly to visit with Jesse's sister."

"Oh, that's nice. How is your sister, Jesse?" Anika asked.

"Fine. She's in good health and living in a nice community. We hadn't seen each other in ... a long time, so we did some catching up," he explained.

"Oh, that's good," Anika smiled. "Did Mica stay here?"

"Yes," Eve answered. "He stayed with the Biranis. We're really grateful for them looking after Mica while we were away. Luckily, we weren't gone too long, just three days, so it wasn't too hard on Fatima and Georges."

The elevator reached its destination and gradually, with Jesse and Tomas holding the door, everyone was able to exit the car with their luggage.

"Are you all finished with hockey now?" Jesse asked Kirsten.

"Sort of," she grinned. "I have been invited to the Team Canada tryouts in Regina this summer."

"Really," Jesse said in surprise. "That's amazing. You must be really proud of her," he said to her parents.

"We are," Anika replied. "Why don't you come over later when we've got lunch ready and she can tell you all about it?"

"Is that okay with you, Eve?" he wondered.

"Yes, of course it is," she smiled, seeing through this little deception immediately. Anika and Eve were conspiring put the two young adults together without being too obvious ... or at least that's what they thought.

Jesse was oblivious to the game, thinking he would welcome any time he could spend with Kirsten. She had been out of his reach since Christmas with both hockey and her studies. But he had fond memories of skiing with her at Whistler, and the baseball game they enjoyed late the previous summer. It wasn't much to hang onto, but anything at all with the beautiful blonde was a bonus.

Chapter 18 An Improvement in Outlook

March 23, 2012 12:30pm

"I have a question, Anika," Jesse said as the four sat at the dining room table. "If we were in Sweden, what would you serve for lunch?"

"Ah, you are curious," she smiled. "Well, it might be some yellow pea soup and an oven-baked pancake with jam or something sweet on it. Or it might be a whitefish baked in a traditional sauce with some potato and a vegetable. The lunch at home is usually a hot meal, but not too big."

"My mom used to make yellow pea soup with shredded carrot and pepper on top," he said. "I really liked it. She'd make a big batch and freeze the rest of it in little containers. I'd have that for lunch any day," he smiled.

"You must miss your mother's cooking," she offered with a sad smile.

"Yes ... I do ... a lot. But Eve is a very good cook too, and she makes some traditional Czech dishes now and then. I'll never starve," he chuckled.

"How are your studies coming, Jesse?" Kirsten asked.

"Okay, I think. I'll know better when I take the entrance exams in May. It's pretty competitive getting into the big universities now. I'll have to have good scores on my tests to get accepted. If I don't make it, I'll look for a community college that offers the courses I want."

"I hope you make it," Kirsten said with a smile.

"Thanks," he said shyly. Encouragement from her was always welcome.

"Do you know what you want to study?" Tomas asked.

"Yes ... I've chosen a number of business and English courses, along with psychology. Some of the courses will be second year since I'm getting a base in first year now. But I'm not sure how I'll do in the science courses on the UBC entrance exams, so I'm not counting on making the grade. Whatever happens, I'll continue with my education, even if I have to take night school."

"Have you thought about what kind of career you want?" Anika asked.

"Only in general terms. I'd like to find something that allowed me to use my writing skills. I've been working on putting together a résumé, but I don't know where I want to send it yet. I'm using the Internet to check the job-search sites. I've got lots of time, so I won't rush to make a decision."

"It must have been exciting for you to meet your sister again," Kirsten said.

"Yes. I couldn't remember her last name ... her married name, but Eve was able to find it and had her traced. Her first husband died when they were living in Atlanta, but she moved to Arizona and remarried a couple of years later."

"Oh, she must be quite a bit older than you," Kirsten said.

"Uhh ... yeah, she is," Jesse stumbled, realizing what he had revealed. "She married young." It was pretty weak, he knew, but he desperately wanted to change the subject. His runaway mouth had got him into deep water.

Jesse had barely finished his comment when he felt a hand on his thigh. It could only have been Kirsten's and the surprise was startling. She had been so reticent ... so cautious for so long. Only their day at the ballpark and their two days of skiing at Christmas gave him any hope that she would warm to him. Now, something had changed and he was curious to find out what it was.

He held her up to be something unattainable. He knew falling for her might bring disappointment, but he couldn't help himself. Like a moth to the flame, he couldn't resist the attraction. Now, with a simple hidden gesture, something had changed. Dare he hope? She wasn't looking in his direction, but her hand remained and occasionally he felt a light squeeze.

"Thank you for the lunch, Anika," Jesse said with a smile. "It was delicious. Now, I think I'll go for a walk. I've been stuck in a flying metal cigar tube and a hotel room for most of this week. I could use a little exercise and fresh air."