“It’s just—”
“No! Tell me!”
“Well, Ben, we’re the… we’re the same.”
“No, we are most definitely not the same.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Just listen to me for a moment.”
“OK.”
“I’m not responsible for my wife and kids’ murder. My wife…. Jesus, my wife is perfectly fine—well, at least she was before I lost my memory. As far as I know, she’s fine. But my kids… goddammit… someone did… someone murdered them! It happened…. It happened shortly before I lost my memory. Shortly before I woke up in a hospital after being found in a dumpster.”
“You know who you are, Ben?”
“It’s Sean. And, yes.”
“But… how?”
“I don’t know.”
“What… what are you going to do? I mean, you can’t just go back to your old life. You just can’t!”
“Ian, the miraculous return of my memory—I’ve got my memory back, man! Aren’t you supposed to be happy for me?”
The silver men around us creak, mumble, and whisper among themselves. One keeps wiping tears from its eyes.
“I… Ben—I mean, Sean… of course I’m happy for you. I’m just—”
“I know who killed my little boy… my little girl…”
“What? Ben, don’t you think you should… I don’t know… slow down? You know, make sure that all these supposed memories that are flooding back are real memories? I mean, shouldn’t you just give it some time, maybe?”
“I don’t get you, man. Do you wake up every day distrusting your memories?”
“Well…”
“You know what you know, right? It’s not a goddamned mystery. You know what you know. And I know who I am. God, I should be celebrating!”
“Well… well, then, why don’t we?” I ask, forcing some enthusiasm into my tone. I make as though I’m about to get up and that Ben should follow. “Let’s go up the street to the Congress Hotel for a… for a whiskey. You know, that place is famous for all the babies Al Capone threw out the seventh floor windows.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, Ian. I should be celebrating, but I’m not in a celebratory mood. Yes, I got my memory back, but that meant knowing that my blood… my own children are dead. Murdered. And knowing who did it… I just…”
“Who did it, Ben—I mean, Sean?”
“My own lovely wife. My own lovely wife did it. And then she tried to do me in.”
“How is any of this possible?”
“I’m not from here.”
“I know. You’re from Buffalo.”
“No, I’m not from Buffalo. I’m from Inverness.”
“Inverness? That’s only thirty miles north. That’s pretty much the same as being from here!”
“Not Inverness, Illinois. Inverness, Scotland.”
“Scotland? But you don’t—well, you talk a little weird, but it’s definitely not a Scottish accent. I should know. You know how much BBC I watch.”
“Uh-huh.”
“See! You’re misremembering. This is all some kind of trick your brain’s playing on you.”
“No. No, I don’t have much of an accent because my dad was American. I also think I’ve been, I don’t know, subconsciously suppressing it all these years here in Chicago. But I was brought up in Inverness my whole life. I brought up my… my kids there. We had a big house right on the River Ness. My wife… she was very… very successful. She was gone a lot on business trips to Japan, America, China…”
“Wait, if you have family back in Scotland, how come no one has been looking for you?”
“My ma died when I was seventeen. Cancer. My dad died a few years later. From the bottle and my ma’s absence. I have an uncle in Ireland I never really knew. But, besides my wife and my… kids… that’s it. I would have thought my coworkers—oh! I was an instructor at the college. That’s right! I just remembered. English literature. That’s probably why I’ve thought all these years that I may have been some kind of writer. I mean, I tried… but I’m no writer. Just a reader, I guess. But, it makes sense to me now.”
“Wait. Don’t you have a brother?”
“No.”
“I thought… wait…. Didn’t your wife sleep with your brother? Isn’t he the actual father of your children?”
“What? Ian, you watch too much TV.”
“No! You wrote that in your journal!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”
“OK, fine. Fine. Sure. I’m the crazy one. But your employers, your coworkers haven’t looked for you?”
“Who knows? Maybe they did. I mean, why would they look for me in the States, let alone Chicago?”
“I guess I don’t know. But how is it the FBI doesn’t know where you’re from? Ben, really, you might be suffering delusions.”
“I’m not… never mind. I don’t know why the FBI can’t place me. I don’t know. Probably because I have no record, either in Scotland or here, obviously. They don’t have my fingerprints or DNA. How could they know? And it’s not like they can email or call everyone in the world and ask them if they know who I am. Also, my lack of any recognizable accent didn’t help, obviously. Besides, they were never all that interested in helping me out. Easier to throw me out with the garbage.”
“You don’t have a record? But you killed—”
“I didn’t kill anyone, Ian! Jesus! Why are you stuck on that?”
“Because… because we’re the same… we’re the same… we’re the same…” I mumble.
“What?”
“How did your wife… I mean, how did she do it? And how’d you end up here?”
“Like I said, the missus was gone a lot. I got to fooling around. A lot. She caught me. She threatened me. She stopped me on the street, outside the college one day, and showed me the pictures her private detective snapped of me and this bird… this young, very young girl that was a student at the college. She was all piss and fury, screaming at me right there in the street, in front of loads of people. She said if I ever touched another woman again, she’d kill me. Not only that, she’d kill the kids.”
“Wow.”
“Of course I knew she was angry. I knew that. And I didn’t blame her. But I didn’t think she’d do it. I didn’t think she’d actually…” He leans over and again puts his head in his hands. He stifles a few sobs.
Reaching across the silver man, I pat him on the back, “There, there. There, there.”
“I never thought she’d do it. I never thought…”
“Of course not. Of course not, Ben,” I say, rubbing his back.
He sits up straight. “It’s Sean, goddammit. And it’s all my fault. My wife told me exactly what she’d do if I ever fucked around again and did I listen? No! Every time she was off on one of her important business trips, there I was with my face in some coed’s pussy looking to improve her test scores.”
“But, Ben—I mean, Sean… how in the world did you end up here?”
“That’s the thing. That’s the thing I need to talk to you about,” he says, all seriousness, making full eye contact. “It’s important to you, isn’t it, that you believe I’m capable of murder?”
“It… is. But when you put it like that—”
“I need some money. I need it fast.” His eyes are marble pools of fog.
“What? Why? What are you talking about?”
“I have to go back to Scotland.”
“What? No! You can’t!”
“I have to. That’s why I was here. My wife… she and her brother… my brother-in-law… they tried to poison me after the kids went missing. I started to piece it together. I started to remember the things my wife said. The kids, they went missing one day. Just six and ten years of age. They didn’t come home from school. We called the police. We got everyone involved. I never forgot what my wife said, and when a few days passed and the kids did
n’t come home I challenged my wife. She feigned exasperation. She made it seem she was terribly distraught. But I knew my wife. I knew she was faking it. I knew she didn’t mean it. And I knew she had something to do with the disappearance of our children. And I told her so. I told her I didn’t know how I was going to prove it, but I would. I moved out of the house and shacked up in some dingy hotel not far from the college. She phoned one night, told me she needed to meet me—had something she had to tell me. I thought she was going to confess. I pocketed a tape recorder and met her in town for dinner. Later that night, after a dinner where she confessed nothing and only pretended to want me back at home where we could work together to find our children… after that I felt my guts twist and burn—my goddamned intestines were falling out of my ass!”
“Ew…”
“But I got an ambulance to the hospital. They pumped my guts and I made it through just fine. But they told me I was poisoned. They got the police involved. They asked me who did it. But… but I didn’t say! I didn’t tell them. I didn’t tell them because… because now I knew for sure who took my babies away from me.”
“And you wanted to deal with it yourself.”
“Yeah.”
“We’re the same.”
“Anyway, when I got out of the hospital, I found out my wife was gone. Gone! When her children were still supposedly missing. But she had business to attend to in—”
“Chicago.”
“That’s right.”
“What happened then?”
“That’s the thing. I remember flying here, but I don’t remember much after arrival. I can only assume that my wife found me before I found her. I do remember something about her brother, though. He was a part of it, I’m certain. And that guy… he’s crooked. He’s a goddamned crook. Organized crime, even. I’m sure of it. Well, sure of it now.”
“That’s an incredible story, Ben.”
“It’s not a story. It’s my life!”
“So you want me to help you get revenge on your wife and brother-in-law.”
“That’s right.”
“Then I’ll come with you. To Scotland. To Inverness.”
“Ian… no. This is something I have to do myself.”
“But it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous… um, Sean.”
“Will you help me? I have to go. I have to go now. I just need money for plane fare. Can you help me out with that? Can you?”
“I don’t know, Sean. I mean, how will you even get there? You don’t have a passport.”
“Mickey. Mickey is a master at counterfeit IDs, birth certificates, passports. All that stuff. He already has one ready for me. I just need to go pick it up. And then I need to get on a plane. I need to go now.”
“Why now?”
“This can’t wait. Jesus, you of all people should understand.”
“I do.”
“I knew you would, buddy. Can you help me out?”
“Are you coming back?”
“What?”
“After you sort things out back home… are you coming back to Chicago?”
“Well, I have to, don’t I? I’m going back to Scotland to kill my wife, goddammit. Not like I can just stay there, walking around town with her blood on my hands, right?”
“So, you are coming back.”
“That’s, uh, what I just said…”
“We’ll still be roommates when you get back?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“And friends? We’ll still be friends?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Best friends?”
“Um… Ian, I really need to go meet Mickey. He’s actually going to throw a few hundred my way, and Jimmy’s chipping in, too. But I still need a lot more for plane tickets and, you know, supplies.”
“Oh, I know all about supplies. Listen, I didn’t get the chance to tell you about my trip up to Minnesota! I—”
“That sounds great. But I have to go. I have to go now. Can we just go to a bank and maybe you can tell me the story on the way?”
“It’s kind of a long story, Ben.”
“It’s Sean. Then, well… maybe you should save the story for when I get back.”
“For when you get back.”
“Yeah. For when I get back.”
“Promise.”
“Huh?’
“You promise you’re coming back?” I ask, unable to hide the desperation rattling my vocal cords.
“Uh… yeah. Sure, Ian. Sure. Can we go to the bank now?”
CHAPTER 29.
It’s been six hours and sixty-one days since you took your love away… I mean, since Ben left for Scotland (I just can’t get Prince out of my head, god rest his soul!). He wouldn’t let me catch the cab with him to Fisters and then to O’Hare—said he had too much on his mind and too much planning to do. I pestered him to let me come along and give him a proper seeing off, but he was adamant. Before he took off, we stopped back at the apartment so he could get his suitcase and some clothes. Ben took out that stack of crazy papers from his suitcase and promptly deposited it in a waste basket as if they meant absolutely nothing. Removing the typewriter, he asked if I wanted it and my heart leapt—a memento! And something I can hold onto and give back to him upon his return. I said yes, of course, and hugged the thing like a teddy bear. Filling the suitcase with tracksuits, socks, and underwear, he snapped it shut and made for the door. I followed.
“Well, Ian…” he said, one hand on the doorknob, the other holding the old brown suitcase.
“Well, Ben—damn! I mean, Sean,” I said, about ten feet of painful distance separating us.
“It’s been…. It’s been…” he said, his eyes blue again.
And I knew he was having a hard time saying goodbye and it broke my heart. I wanted to tell him not to go. But I already did about a dozen times on our way back to the apartment and he just shrugged and looked out the window at grey old Chicago passing by.
“Wait!” I said and hopped back to my bedroom. Returning, I held my iPod out to him. “Here. So you have something you can listen to on the airplane.”
“I’m pretty sure they’ll have music for me to plug my headphones into,” Ben said, eyeing the iPod but not taking it.
“It’s not a problem. I’ve been meaning to get the new one, anyway. And this has lots of good music on it. Much better than plane music. You know, Phil Collins, Mister Mister, Billy Joel, Robert Palmer, Hall and Oates, Huey—”
“Thanks. Thanks,” he interrupted, taking his hand off the door, grabbing the iPod, and slipping it into his pocket.
“It’s no problem whatsoever,” I said, biting my quivering bottom lip. “It… it also has… oh god…”
“Calm down, Ian. Everything’s alright,” Ben said, reaching out to pat my shoulder but pulling his hand back before he could.
A passing thought went through my head: I wonder if I can overpower him, hogtie him, and lock him up in his bedroom. I’d find a way to keep him tied and bound but still able to play FIFA and watch All Creatures Great and Small with me. At night, after watching the show, we could pretend we’re James and Tristan, mid-twentieth century veterinarians. I’d be James, of course, and Ben would be Tristan. His being tied up wouldn’t hinder the charade at all as Tristan is constantly incapacitated due to his silly and hilarious alcoholism.
But, no. No. Ben is totally stronger than me. No way I could overpower him. I’m no dummy.
Still, I thought, if he was to lose a leg… or two…
“I’m OK. I’m OK,” I said, catching my breath. “But, Ben, you can also watch… watch…. You can watch episodes of All Creatures Great and Small on that iPod. I have the first two seasons uploaded on there. It’s a small screen, but it’ll do the trick on the plane, I’m sure of it. It’s been a godsend on the El. A really good distraction from the hustle and bustle and drunkards pissing against the doors.”
“Look, Ian,” Ben said, sounding somewhat impatient much to my botheration. “Look, I really have to… I have to�
��”
Again he was having a hard time getting the words out, so full of emotion at the prospect of parting ways with me. So, I finished his sentence for him, because that’s how close we’ve become—we finish each other’s sentences!
“Kill your wife,” I said.
“Uh… yeah. That. I have to, you know…”
“I understand. Trust me. I understand all about revenge,” I said and winked and he kind of flinched. Obviously he was a bit high-strung, what with all the revelations and dastardly plans for vengeful murder.
I told him everything about Minnesota in the cab (my treat) on the way back to the apartment. He just nodded and said, “Good for you, Ian. Good for you.” I’m pretty sure he said something about me being totally awesome and a righteous genius, too. At least, when reading between the lines, I’m sure that’s what he meant when he kept telling the cabbie to “pick up the pace, man.”
“OK, well…” Ben said, hand back on the doorknob. And then, POOF, just like that, he was gone gone gone. Out the door and on his way back to Inverness with my gift of an iPod and eight-thousand in cash. My whole savings, in fact. Every last penny.
But Ben—I mean, Sean, was my very best friend. I mean, is my best friend. And best friends give everything they have to each other. Everything.
CHAPTER 30.
It’s been almost three months and I haven’t heard a word from Ben. Before he left, I made sure he had our address written down, as well as my cell number, work phone number, and my email address (when I asked for his he said he “didn’t do email”). And still, nothing. Not a peep in all this time. When I call his cell I get Harry’s Haggis and Pizza Parlor for some reason. I’ve also tried to talk to Mickey and Jimmy at Fisters, but I can’t get past the new doorman. When I’ve called, they just hang up the second they recognize my voice. Disguising my voice proved useless, as well, as they usually caught on within seconds, even when I did my very convincing cockney accent. And I miss everyone so much. I especially miss my time with Sheryl. I really felt she was helping me progress though my issues of building invisible boundaries to keep people out of my life, and out of my heart. Between her and Ben I was well on my way to total mental well-being. But, no. That part of my life was halted, and so, again, I suffer a bout of arrested development.
Y Is for Fidelity Page 20