Amelia Weissman
He died in my arms.
“Can you peel the pumpkin, dear? These old arthritic hands can’t handle that.”
“Sure, Mom,” Atlas replied.
She passed him the orange fruit. For a moment, double vision filled his mind. Layered over the quiet little kitchen preparing pumpkin chili with his mother was an image of the pumpkin swamp field in his other backyard. Fat juicy fruits ripe for picking floating at the surface of a pond skimmed with blue algae and ringed with iron trees, fingers of rust creeping up their sturdy trunks.
“Atlas?”
He blinked; the kitchen came back. His mother was staring at him with a very motherly expression he had missed so much. Her auburn hair curled perfectly beneath her ears as her hazel eyes searched his own for something to fix.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“Can you save the seeds so I can roast them in the oven? Your father likes to eat them for a snack with his beer when he watches the game,” she repeated slowly.
“Sure thing, Mom.”
Meg will be having the baby any day now; you’re about to be a grandmother.
“Is Dad going to be over soon?” Atlas asked, cutting the pumpkin into cubes after setting the seeds aside in a bowl.
“Oh, you know your father, he’s got a few things to settle up at the diner first which means he probably won’t be by until dinner is ready,” she answered, patting the seeds dry to store in the fridge for later.
I’m not who you think I am.
“How are Rhea and Selene doing?” Atlas asked, fishing for another topic to keep any semblance of conversation going. They weren’t really his sisters (which is why he insisted on staying out of the will), but he was curious about them. He always wondered what life would have been like if he had grown up with two younger siblings to look after, instead of two miniature graves and a grieving mother.
“Good, I actually just talked to Selene yesterday. She and Ronan are looking at wedding venues out in the country. She’s thinking they’ll plan for some time next spring if they can still get a booking.”
It was spring when he first showed up on my doorstep, clutching his chest because it was so hard for him to breathe. He never anticipated the air would be thinner than in his own world. With his asthma, he never had a chance.
“Here, Mom, let me handle the ground beef. You start making the tomato sauce, that’s your specialty anyway.” Atlas gave her a wink and a kiss on the forehead.
She smiled at him, believing he was her little boy grown up into this fine young man who had struggled so much at the beginning of his adult life but was now coming into his prime.
While rooting around in the fridge for the packages of meat, Atlas struggled within himself to tell her the truth. She deserved to know, and honour was a virtue he valued above all others. Why else would he be here instead of at home with his wife who was days (maybe hours) away from giving birth to their first child? He swore to the man who had been an eerily identical copy of himself in every physical manner right down to the birthmark between his toes that he would give comfort to his parents after he died.
Atlas had developed a constant headache which he prayed wasn’t some sort of brain tumour but rather the result of switching back and forth between lives (and worlds) these past six months. He had done the honourable thing by swooping in like an angel investor and saving the man’s parents’ diner. He repaired the relationship with his parents that the man had broken with his steady stream of disappointments. He became the son they wished they had had.
But he wasn’t their son. He looked at the woman again, the one who wasn’t his mother. He thought of the man he had just called dad and wished he had meant it. He would give anything to have these stolen moments back with his own parents who were carbon copies of this man’s. So was he really here for honour or was he only here for himself?
The beef sizzled in the pan and popped, hot grease angrily spitting at him. His hissed involuntarily as droplets landed on the exposed skin of his arm.
“Oh, honey, run it under cold water.” The woman who wasn’t his mother shooed him toward the sink, expertly taking over the meat in the pan while occasionally stirring the tomato sauce.
He did not argue and followed her instructions. Once she had combined the sauce, meat, and pumpkin chunks, dashed a few spices in for good measure, and set the pot to simmer, she came over to inspect the damage.
“I’m alright really. It was just a little hot grease, that’s all,” Atlas reassured her, breathing in the scents of chili powder, lavender perfume, and home.
“Where did you get these?” she brushed her fingers over the ragged one-inch scars that formed a uniform semi-circle across his forearm.
From a razortooth ichthyosaur who was terrorising my crops and threatening my wife. Don’t worry, its stuffed body is hanging over my mantelpiece now, so I’d say the scars are worth it.
“I got into a bar fight when I was in law school. Pretty stupid really. Some guy cut my arm with a broken bottle,” Atlas replied.
She looked into his eyes, pleading him to tell her something real. He wasn’t sure he could do this anymore.
“Mom, listen I’m—”
“I know,” she reached up and touched his face softly, stroking the wisp of hair that curled around his ears like hers did. “Don’t you think I know my own son? What is your name?”
Startled, Atlas dropped the towel on the floor where it lay between them like a physical manifestation of the fraudulent veil that had just come crashing down. He couldn’t think of a better answer, so he just settled for the truth. “Atlas, like his. Only I’m Atlas Annora, he was Atlas—”
“Bronislaw, I remember. I named him.” Tears, small and delicate like pearls, beaded in the corners of her eyes. “Did he suffer?”
“No,” Atlas didn’t think twice about lying to her. Suffocating in the air of an alien parallel world with no one to hold your hand but your doppelganger whose life you blundered into mere moments before is not the kind of “peaceful passing” any mother would wish for her son.
Knuckles rapped on the door. The woman who wasn’t his mother turned away.
“Looks like your father got out early,” she said, as if the last few moments hadn’t happened. “Go open the door for him and I’ll put this bread in the oven. If you two want to sit down and turn on the game, I’ll be right in with a couple of beers and those pumpkin seeds.”
Atlas looked wistfully at the woman who wasn’t his mother, wishing he could keep pretending for longer than just tonight. He was about to become a father, and he couldn’t keep coming back. His promise was fulfilled; now he was honour-bound to the family waiting for him back home.
Atlas Annora opened the door to greet the man who wasn’t his father, ready to play Atlas Bronislaw for just one more night.
Amelia Weissman is a mom of six with her Master’s in marine biology. Originally from New England, she currently lives in the South with her piano technician husband and gaggle of high-spirited, imaginative kids. She has been published as a scientific writer in research journals and as a fiction writer in Starward Shadows Quarterly e-zine, Black Hare Press Anthology Year Four, SpecPoVerse, Sudden Flash, and Soul Poetry, Prose and Arts Magazine. When she’s not homeschooling her ragtag crew of minions, you can find her nerding out over marine research data or tapping into her muse and diving into worlds unknown. Instagram: @aweissman_ficwriter
