Timelines: Stories Inspired by H.G. Wells' the Time Machine by Jw Schnarr Page B

here.”
    “ Is the rest of your life loud?” she asked.
    Jameson thought of his days, work where his boss yelled at him in a drunken stupor, home where he had to sing to his mother during commercials lest she get upset.
    “ My name is James,” he said. She sat down next to him and he turned to face her. She was sitting with one leg bent under her, the other swinging off the bench.
    “ Muriel,” she said, putting the book on her lap and holding out her hand.
     
     
    “ Mother, what would you think if I got a nurse to come in and look after you some days?” Jameson asked. He was rocking her during a commercial break. She was watching Jerry Springer.
    “ Oh sweetie, you do a good enough job. I don’t need anyone else,” she replied, her voice gurgling with phlegm from some unknown virus that had taken hold of her. She reached a hand up, the skin loose and spotted with age, and patted his hand.
    “ I was just thinking, it might be better for you. I can’t be home all the time. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”
    A spasm of coughs racked through her body. She stood up, her joints creaking more than the rocking chair.
    “ Now you know very well I can take care of myself,” she said, reaching for her cane. Jameson handed it to her. It was simple silver metal with rubber grips. “I don’t need you here. If you want to run off and be a man, sow some wild oats, then go do it. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You being like your father, running off on me?”
     
     
    With his mother’s health worsening, she clung to her son while berating him for wanting to be free. The more she yelled, the more he clung to his Legos and fled into the past, to speak with Muriel on the park bench. She had already given up on Beowulf and moved to A Tale of Two Cities instead.
    “ I really like it,” she said.
    “ Why don’t you go to college?” he asked.
    “ Oh no,” she said, turning her head down. “That’s not going to happen. I am going to secretarial school though. We just can’t afford college. Not for me, not like this.”
    Jameson found out that her parents had died in a car accident and she lived alone with her sister, Martha. Martha was older, had started school on scholarship but was now a legal secretary. Muriel had wanted to be a schoolteacher, but was now working on getting her secretarial skills in order to find a job.
    “ Did you go to college?” she asked, her brown eyes examining him.
    “ Yes,” he said. “I’m an accountant.”
    Muriel took his hand. “That’s a good job,” she said. “A real good profession. Do you like to read?”
    Jameson nodded and Muriel handed him the book, pointing to a passage. He read it to her and she leaned in against him, her warmth fighting off the encroaching winter.
     
     
    Jameson figured out a schedule. He could stay for long stretches in the past and then go back to his own time just moments after he left. The trouble was, he was sick of his mother, he was sick of her ire now fully unleashed on him, how he was ungrateful for all she did for him. He was sick of his boss having him do all the work, while he took all the glory and bonuses. He began spending even more time in the past, taking Muriel out for walks, to shows, reading to her in the park.
    It was Muriel who proposed. She asked that he make them legitimate. It was only after he said no that she confessed she missed her period.
     
     
    “ You seem so distant lately,” Jameson’s mother said. “Is everything okay?” They were eating Shepherd’s Pie.
    “ It’s nothing,” he said, moving mashed potatoes, browned with mutton, around his plate.
    “ A woman can tell when another woman is causing trouble, especially when that women is your mother,” she said.
    “ It’s just-”
    “ Do you love her?” his mother asked.
    “ I think so.” He said.
    “ If you’re not sure you don’t. You love me, right?”
    “ Of course!” he said, lifting his head. She shuffled over to