by Graham Smith
Every part of me is intrigued by her big secret and, combined with the guilt I carry for her death, I feel compelled to open the second letter and follow her clues.
Except it is never quite that simple. I’m of a different generation, religion and mind-set to Ms Rosenberg. What she deems as a worthy and understandable clue, may well be indecipherable for me.
The chances of failure are high, and there is the certainty that if I do fail, I’ll have let her down in death as well as in life.
‘Jake.’
I look up at Alfonse. He’s holding the first letter. ‘What?’
‘Stop beating yourself up for something you haven’t done yet and open the other letter.’
I’d scowl at Alfonse but there’s no point: he knows me too well and would know that the scowl was really aimed at myself.
There’s no way I can, in good conscience, refuse Ms Rosenberg’s request, and I’m aware that my delay in opening the second letter is nothing more than my psyche girding its loins for whatever may come next.
Alfonse and I know that as soon as I find the clues in the second letter I’ll be hooked, and will follow them doggedly until I have solved them all.
I open the envelope and pull out a sheet of paper and another key for a safety deposit box.
I lay down the key and look at the paper; I see a list of names.
My coffee goes cold as I puzzle over the names.
Watson
Marshall
Evans
Devereaux
Clapperton
Devereaux
Boulder
Devereaux
Boulder
Clapperton
They don’t make sense to me, not on any level. I’m on there, as are Alfonse and Chief Watson. I don’t know who the Marshall or Evans are, but I’m guessing the Clapperton is her editor at the Gazette.
What’s even more puzzling is the repetition of our names. I get two mentions, as does Clapperton, Alfonse gets three mentions, and the other names feature only once.
I pass the paper to Alfonse, and have a look at the key. It looks old and there are a series of numbers etched into both sides. One set of numbers has faded with age and the other looks as if it has been added recently.
1 7 7 3 6 7 6 2 2 4
I figure that the old ones denote the box number and the new ones are relative to the list of names. I can’t see how yet, but I’m determined to figure it out.
7
I can’t help but pace back and forth across the waiting room. John, on the other hand, sits with his legs crossed at the ankles in a way that suggests he’s calm and relaxed.
It should be the other way round. He’s the one who needs bone marrow if he wants to see his children grow up. I’m nothing more than a possible donor. Well, perhaps a little more: I’m the half-brother he tracked down to hopefully save his life.
I want to ask what’s keeping the doctor, but it would be a stupid question. As always, I’ve arrived early.
John has leukaemia and needs a bone marrow transplant. His sister, Sarah, is pregnant and he’s flat out refused to ask her. Like me, he doesn’t have any aunts, uncles or cousins. So, left with no other option, he travelled to Utah and, metaphorically speaking, knocked on my door.
If learning that my family tree has a whole other branch wasn’t enough to sideswipe me, the reason he’d looked me up was an unexpected gut-punch.
We met up a couple of times for a coffee or a bite to eat. Our conversations were stilted at first, but after a while we found that we had a surprising amount of similarities. Our music and film tastes run along the same lines but, where I’m a reader, he’s a devoted TV fan.
I’ve seen pictures of my nieces, and his sister’s son. I know their names and their ages.
What I haven’t been able to get past, so far as John and his sister are concerned, are their names.
I don’t mean their surnames. I was a MacDonald myself until mother remarried and I became a Boulder.
It’s my newfound siblings’ Christian names that trouble me: they are John and Sarah.
I’m Jake, and my sister is Sharon.
My father and his new wife chose the same initials for their children as my father did with my mother. This kind of coincidence doesn’t happen by accident – not when the initials are even gender matched. Had they been called Simon and Jenny I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid; but John and Sarah? Those names had me thinking all manner of things about my father.
On the one hand I wondered if he was trying to replace the children he’d lost, but on the other hand I hated him for supplanting us. I don’t know which version is right and it’s not like I’ll ever find out. It’s nigh on thirty years since my father left our home, and just over twenty since he walked out on John’s mother.
It’s unkind of me to even think it, but I can’t help speculating if there is perhaps a James and Susan out there, or a Jason and Samantha.
Whether there is or isn’t, it doesn’t matter. Right now, my every thought is on whether or not I’ll be a match. If I am, I’ll be able to save my half-brother’s life and, in some karmic way, atone for the fact that I couldn’t save Ms Rosenberg’s.
A buzzer sounds and a tinny voice announces my name.
I toss a “here goes” look towards John, and lead him down the corridor.
Dr Becker has been the family doctor since we moved here. As the years have passed I’ve seen his waist expand in perfect synchronicity with the receding of his hairline. He’s a kindly man who genuinely cares for his patients.
His face is grave but I don’t read anything into it. Grave is his natural expression.
‘Come in, Jake, take a seat.’ He glances at my half-brother. ‘I’m guessing you’re John?’
I make sure John takes a seat before I do.
There’s a folder on Dr Becker’s desk and I can see my name on the label.
Dr Becker doesn’t miss much, and he picks up on where my eyes are. ‘I’m not going to beat about the bush here, Jake, John. I’m afraid the results are negative.’
I’m at a loss for anything to say.
John isn’t. He looks at Dr Becker with a forlorn expression, thanks him, and stands to leave.
I grab John’s arm and look at the doctor. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ Dr Becker’s expression softens. ‘You’re aware of the Human Leukocyte Antigen markers we test to see if you’re a match?’ I nod. ‘We got a match on five out of eight, but you need six HLA markers to match before any hospital will even consider it.’
I want to swear and rage at the world in general, but I don’t. If John is taking this news in a respectful way, I must too.
With me being out of the running for a transplant, our – or should I say John’s – options are slim to zero. Sharon’s results came back yesterday, and they too proved negative.
Like blood, many people donate their bone marrow to be used by strangers. Because John’s blood is the rare AB negative – as is mine and Sharon’s – the odds of him finding a match from an unknown donor are much slimmer than usual.
John is stoic and silent as we clamber into my car.
I don’t know what he’s thinking but, if I had to guess from his expression, I’d say he’s trying to find a way of breaking the news to his wife.
It’s a train of thought I’m determined to derail.
‘There’s only one thing for it: we’ll have to find our father.’
I can’t use the word “dad”. Dads are loving and caring. They teach their kids things; nurture and support them. They build toys on Christmas Eve and go out searching for batteries on Christmas Day. Dads get kites down from trees and defend you when your mother complains that you’ve come home covered in mud.
Nor can I use our father’s given name. To do so would afford him a respect he doesn’t deserve.
I think of him as Father. Not as “a father”, just “Father”. Like the stern Victorian patriarchs who only saw their kids once
or twice a week and expected children to be on their best behaviour at all times.
‘How?’
‘I have no idea how to find him.’ I toss John a smile. ‘But I know a man who will.’
Alfonse already has one old man to find: Halvard Weil. What’s another?
8
As usual when he’s working at his computer, Alfonse is oblivious to the world around him. I’ve let myself into his apartment, made us a coffee, and sat puzzling over the twin problems of finding a father and making sense of Ms Rosenberg’s clues, without him even looking up.
His hand releases the mouse long enough to reach for the cup I’ve placed on his Simpsons coaster.
Whichever way I look at it, the trail to find my father will start with my grandparents. I haven’t seen them since I visited Glasgow a decade back and they were pushing towards frail then – Granny told us the same things numerous times, while Grandad sat with rheumy eyes and his typically proud expression.
The Christmas letter they send each year is increasingly hard to read as Granny’s handwriting worsens.
It goes against my instincts to try to find my father. Many years ago, Sharon and I resolved together that we would forget about the man who’d walked out on us without a goodbye. We told each other we were better off without a father, that we didn’t want the return of one who didn’t have the guts to be honest with his kids. Together we welcomed Neill Boulder into Mother’s life, as it was obvious that he put a song in her heart and the smile back on her lips.
Neill possessed enough tact not to try and replace our father. Instead he assumed the role of a favoured uncle. He would offer advice when it was requested and silence on matters we didn’t share with him.
He is a good man who chose to take on a sullen girl, and a boy who couldn’t help but get into one scrape after another. I was never the kind of teen who stole, or got involved with drugs, but I did more than my fair share of fighting and there were several incidents when I was caught in compromising situations with different girls.
Now I’ve decided to look up my birth father, Neill’s feelings must be considered – along with those of my sister and mother.
Sharon has a good heart and I know she’ll understand. Mother, on the other hand, will use it as a stick to beat me. Mother is a narcissist who’s never encountered a topic she couldn’t make about herself. I know she’ll rant about how I’m being insensitive and inconsiderate – for a few hours – before she concedes that I’m doing the right thing.
Alfonse pushes his keyboard forward and gets to his feet. ‘How’d you get on?’
I shake my head.
‘I’m sorry, man.’ He nods. I know he’ll leave my feelings alone unless I tell him how the news has affected me. ‘How did John take it?’
‘Like he didn’t expect good news. There is another option though.’
Alfonse studies me and wipes an imaginary crumb from his polo shirt. ‘Your father?’
‘Yeah.’
There’s not a lot else to say. Alfonse is the one person in the world, other than Sharon, who I’ve shared my real feelings about my father with.
‘I thought it might come to this if you weren’t a match.’ He looks me in the eye and holds my gaze. ‘Whatever you need, buddy, I’m here.’
I don’t need to thank him any more than he needs to hear the words. He and I are tight. We’ve had each other’s backs since the days when a bookish nerd helped a lazy Scot pass exams, and a lazy Scot stopped a bookish nerd getting his ass kicked.
‘Let’s recap the case first, then we can discuss what needs to be done to find Father.’
‘Fair enough.’ Alfonse lifts a sheet of paper from his printer and hands it to me.
He knows I absorb things better if I read, rather than hear, them.
His report is as brief and blunt as ever.
Alfonse has checked the usual sources and come up blank. For the last five years, Halvard Weil has been living at no fixed abode. His last address is a few hundred yards from the one Ms Rosenberg gave us.
His social security number showed him as being employed by a small pawn shop in Brooklyn, but when Alfonse called them, they said he’d quit some years ago.
It’s possible he’s slipped through the cracks in the system, but not probable. I don’t know what to make of it, and judging by his defeated expression neither does Alfonse.
All along we’ve thought it would be a simple case of tracking down Halvard, and either calling him or sending him a letter to request that he contacts Pauline. Now that he can’t be easily found, we’ll have to take other measures. The first of which, will be a visit to the pawn shop.
It will be me who’ll travel to New York. Alfonse’s skills are with a computer, whereas I’m better at questioning people and getting information from them.
‘What about the clues Ms Rosenberg left us? Where have you got with them?’
‘Nowhere. I looked at them all ways, and have as much idea now as I did when I started.’
I’m not considering the clues she’s left us as a priority, and I’m only asking as I know that Alfonse will have tried to crack them.
When I think about them a little more, I realise they maybe should be higher up our list of priorities. Alfonse and I agreed that the safety deposit box key she’d left in envelope 2, was most likely for a box held in a New York bank. The clues would tell us which bank.
If I am going to New York to track Halvard, it would make sense to locate the bank, and claim the box’s contents, when I am in town.
‘I’ll take a look at them. See if I get anywhere.’
‘Cool. I’ll get you booked on a flight to New York tomorrow morning.’
‘Don’t book it just yet.’ I swallow before continuing. ‘Taylor’s going to a wedding in New York in a couple of days. I wasn’t going to go, but if I’m going to be in New York …’
He chuckles at my discomfort. Taylor is my girlfriend, and all the signs are there that she’s going to be around longer than the usual three months my relationships last. For the first time in my life I’ve done the whole meet-the-parents thing. Both ways.
Within ten minutes of meeting Taylor, Mother had produced my baby pictures and started discussing possible names for the grandchildren she wanted Taylor and me to supply her with.
My cheeks had burned for the whole evening, and I only managed to refrain from drinking myself into a stupor by focussing on the fact that I should never share the same space as hard liquor.
Always a step ahead, Alfonse hands me a notepad, pen, and the phone from his desk. Letting Taylor know I can join her in New York will be easy; asking Grandad about Father, not so much.
9
It’s good to hear Grandad’s voice. He’s the one who taught me how to look after myself. Not in a metaphorical way, more physically.
Before Mother, Sharon and I left Glasgow, when Neill’s new job relocated him to Casperton, Grandad took me into the back garden and spent an afternoon teaching me the fighting skills he’d learned in the Clyde shipyards.
None of the methods he showed me could be considered fair, moral or anything other than dirty, but he taught me that fair fighters are rarely victorious fighters.
I explain to him about John and hear his breath catch. It catches again when I tell him that neither Sharon nor I are matches.
‘That’s not a good thing to hear, son.’
Despite all the miles between us, I can picture him sitting in his chair with his back ramrod straight and his eyes fixed on a point in the distance. It’s how he reacts to bad news. Grandad isn’t a man who shows his emotions. Like all Glasgow’s sons, he frowns upon lavish praise. If Grandad tells you that you look “no’ too bad”, or that you “didnae dae ower bad efter a’”, you’re getting his equivalent of a ticker tape parade.
The counterbalance to this is a conversation I once overheard him having with a neighbour. He was praising Sharon and me to the rooftops, with one endorsement after another. While he’d never give
compliments to your face, he was your biggest champion when you weren’t there to hear the pride in his voice.
‘I can only think of one other person who might be a match.’
The line is silent for so long I think he’s hung up on me. ‘Yer faither?’
‘Aye.’ As always, when speaking to Grandad or Granny, I’ve slipped into Scottish terms and slang. ‘Or possibly his other children, if he has more I don’t know about.’
‘Naw. There’s jist the four of you.’ I can hear his breath rasp down the phone as he composes his next sentence. ‘I expect you’ll be wanting to ken where he is?’
‘Aye.’
One word seems to be all I can manage. This is a conversation I’d promised myself I’d never have. Yet here I am, having it.
The fight with the compass points last night was a doddle compared with this. Physical pain is something I can handle and am used to. Emotional hurt is something else altogether.
What’s making it worse is that I know it’s not just me who’s suffering. Grandad will be too. He never liked the way my father had walked out on us, and would have liked it even less when he did it to John and Sarah’s mother.
My call will bring it all to the surface. Worse than that is the news I’ve given him about John. People don’t expect to outlive their children, let alone their grandchildren. It’s the natural order of things, and here I am upsetting the balance of his life.
I hear a hearty sniff and remember Grandad’s misshapen nose. What makes my heart ache is that there’s no trace of a cold in Grandad’s voice.
‘I’m sorry, son. I dinnae ken where he is. He calls when it’s oor birthdays and at Christmas, but he never gies me a number I can call him on.’