Concerning Jessica
Jessica had the special distinction of always being as old as she felt. She would be curls and sunshine in bloomers sitting in a sandbox with all the other four-year-olds, then she would look up to the sun and wonder a thought and in a moment would change to a teenager forming questions about the universe and fate and God and love.
Her gift (if you will) manifested itself slowly. She didn’t know it was happening, and it took a long while for other people to see what was happening. When she was a baby, she would move forward or back only in increments of days. Nothing spectacular. Nothing noteworthy. Babies had growth spurts all the time. When she was six she saw her Daddy crying from across the room over a picture of his wife, and she stood up on the strong legs of a matured young woman grown and gone from home, and she walked over and gave him a hug and said that she missed her too.
It took her a long time before she could hold an age for any amount of time. She would move decades back and forth based only on what she thought. When she was an early teenager, in real time she learned how to get into R-rated movies and bars to see musicians she liked. In her middle teens, she moved from a little girl to a middle-aged woman and everywhere in between in the course of a day. She moved farther and farther away from her birthday and left for college. One day she was sitting on a bench by the lake watching a couple in love, and that’s when the love of her life sat down beside her for the first time. She kept that age for the rest of her life. Through the children, the many days on the lake, the many fights and makeups, she would never look a day over twenty-six because of the love she had. Her children grew and moved far away and had children of their own. The trees around their house grew and bloomed and slept and were struck down by lightning on occasion. He grew old, of course, skin spotted and sagging from his face, but even through the days at the hospital, she stayed vital and beautiful for him because of her love.
When he was finally gone, she stood in the middle of her bedroom, staring at a picture from their wedding. She stared hard at the photo of them feeding each other cake and tried to hold that age in her mind, but her reflection in the glass only showed an old woman, sad beyond her years.