This Time Tomorrow

Alice goes for a run. She runs into a mother from Belvedere, who confirms she’ll be at Alice’s party later that night. Alice runs to Pomander Walk, unsure if Leonard is at home or in the hospital. Their home is unrecognizable: clean, without any of Alice’s belongings or Leonard’s ashtrays. A neighbor stops by to feed the cat, revealing that Leonard is in the hospital.

Alice returns to her new home for a shower. She notes the differences in her body now that she’s given birth to two children. She meets their nanny, Sondra.

Alice visits Leonard in the hospital. She is disappointed to find Leonard in the same condition, wondering, “Whatever she had managed to accomplish in between her 16th birthday and this moment, it had changed everything else in her life, so why hadn’t it changed this?” (209). Alice finds a woman in Leonard’s hospital room whom she hasn’t met before, but the woman looks familiar. She gives Alice a birthday card Leonard wrote for her a month ago, when he was feeling better. Leonard is unable to speak. The card alludes to Alice’s time travel: “Al, welcome back. You’ll get used to it. Happy birthday, again” (211). Alice finds out that her father’s wife’s name is Deborah and that she lives close to Pomander Walk. Alice assumes she’s walked by her before without knowing who she was.

Alice gets ready for her lavish birthday party. She talks to Dorothy about her dress and marvels at motherhood. Because Alice didn’t grow up with her mother, she isn’t sure how to be one herself. Sam hasn’t answered any of Alice’s texts, so as the apartment fills with guests Alice looks around for her, worried that they’re no longer friends. She runs into Emily and speaks to her with the familiarity of colleagues, but in this version of Alice’s life, she and Emily don’t work together. Sam arrives, pregnant, and Alice is happy and relieved.

Alice asks Sam if she remembers Alice’s 16th birthday party. Sam remembers Alice’s belief that she had traveled through time and asks her if it’s happened again. Sam isn’t sure if she believes Alice, but she believes that Alice believes she’s been time traveling. She shows Alice a novel written by Leonard, published when Alice graduated from high school. The novel is a time-travel story about a teenager who jumps through time.

Alice ditches her birthday party to find a fortune teller. Tommy is texting her, wondering where she’s gone. She sees that he can track her through their iPhones. His messages are angry, and she reflects that she doesn’t know what Tommy is actually like in the grip of strong emotion. She notes that part of her is “thrilled to be in this part of a relationship—the boring part, the plateau at the top of the mountain. And the kids” (229).

She asks the fortune teller how she can know if she’s living the right life. The woman reads tarot cards for Alice and notes the image of a dog, symbolizing a loyal friend or family member in Alice’s life to whom she should listen. She also pulls the Fool card, which the fortune teller says is a message: “[Y]ou never know what’s coming, so you gotta be happy when it’s there. Whatever it is” (232).

Alice turns off her iPhone’s tracking capabilities and goes to her childhood home on Pomander Walk. She reads Leonard’s new book, which is ostensibly about time travel and contains echoes of their own portal, but which Alice can read “for what it [is], which [is] a love story. Not a romance […] the book [is] about the love between a single parent and their only child […] It [is] the kind of thing that Leonard would never have said aloud […] But it [is] true all the same” (238). She decides to time travel again.

Alice wakes up at age 16. She wants to “start herself and her dad down a path, and if it turn[s] out to be a bad choice, she [can] always double back” (244). Alice tells Leonard that she wants to skip the SAT prep class and take a long walk with him.

During four different time-traveling trips, slight variations happen to Alice’s life, but Leonard always ends up dying slowly in the hospital.

In every reincarnation of her 16th birthday, Alice makes sure Sam suggests that Leonard write another novel about time traveling, this time with a girl at the center of the story. She has other experiences during her time traveling, including having sex with Tommy again just for the sake of it.

Alice continues to jump back and forth between herself at age 40 and at age 16. Leonard always ends up dying slowly in the hospital.

In several iterations of her life, Alice ends up married to Tommy. But their children never feel like her children, and Tommy never feels like her husband. She often tells Leonard that she’s been time traveling, but sometimes she doesn’t, enjoying the liminality of her life, which she likens to “going to a zoo, only you [can] climb behind every fence and get right up close […] Nothing [can] hurt her, because everything [is] temporary” (250).

In one of her time travels back to her teenage self, Alice shaves her head. She knows the shaved head can be changed again, and she has always wanted to see what it would be like.

In one time travel, Alice finds herself in New Zealand. In another, Deborah calls her to come quickly because there isn’t much time left. But Alice knows that as long as she can keep traveling through time, there is always more time with Leonard.

Each time Alice travels back to age 16, she enjoys lunch with her father and usually tells him about time traveling, which never ceases to delight Leonard.

Alice enjoys the sensation of going back and forth through time because suddenly, nothing has consequences: “[S]he felt like she could do it forever, and like no one would ever die, and whatever choices she made, they didn’t matter, because she was just going to undo them in the morning” (255).

Alice pretends that by traveling back through time, she makes her father immortal.