Distortion

by Gautam Malkani

  Two minutes later, your daddy starts throwing down some extra footage. Deleted scenes he’d cut for length. Tells you they couldn’t just plant the coded messages in the newspaper’s classified or personal ads cos that shit’s already been done to death and so the cops are always checking for it.

  You tell him you don’t care. You load up the trolley with another stack of back issues.

  “Dylan, look, I appreciate it’s a bit of a nothing burger. Maybe the only surprising fact is that you hadn’t already guessed all this yourself. But nonetheless it’s still serious. These people are dangerous and not to be trusted and they mean business. That’s why I told you all those other stories – to protect you. To stop you nosing around. I realise telling you that thing about it being a paranormal phenomenon was perhaps a bit far-fetched – though no more outlandish than that woe-is-me tale you told Naliah about me abandoning you.”

  The scent drifting through the tunnel from the furnace no longer smelling like a bonfire or barbecue. More like an engine – or an overheating electrical appliance.

  “So how much they pay you then, Daddy? To plant all them secret messages.”

  “You really want all those details? I’m happy to give them to you. Give you my tax returns too. I’m not hiding anything. Not any more. But surely all that really matters is that some sort of illegal activity was committed. People were doing things they shouldn’t have been doing. Some people got away with it and the people who got away with it got away. Some people were punished and the people who were punished for it were punished. End of story, son. Everything else is just padding.”

  For some reason, this bit of his story fucks you off something serious. The way he tries to own it. Sure, the whole thing might’ve been minor and boring, but ain’t no need to front about that. It’s like as if, all sudden-like, your daddy now reckons himself. Like all them cocksure student start-up founders. Or those posh boys who just shoulder shrug whenever they fuck up.

  Hey, Daddy, you don’t have to be remorseful or nothing, but try not to act so manly and matter-of-factly.

  It don’t suit you, Daddy.

  Don’t suit you one bit.

  Let’s face it, you ain’t exactly Vin Diesel.

  In fact, you’re the one who should’ve been popping anti-oestrogen pills, you lonely fucking loser of a man.

  This is when you realise you’ve accidentally unmuted all this.

  Your daddy slam-shoves the half-loaded trolley outta the space between you. Barely even rolls three feet, though. “How dare you, Dylan? After all your crap these past few days, how dare you? You know what, let me tell you something about journalism, son: it isn’t the who, what, when or where that makes a story, it’s the why that matters most. I didn’t plant those fake eyewitness quotes for money, you fool, I planted them for a woman.”

  Cliché #1: Turns out the woman in question was a PR woman. Or at least she’d fronted like she was a PR woman.

  Cliché #2: Your daddy says the important thing to remember is that, technically, he didn’t have an extramarital affair with her cos he didn’t actually do the deed.

  Cliché #3: So basically he’s claiming he ain’t some lonely loser of a man cos he once managed to have an affair, but, at the same time, he ain’t some pathetic piece-of-shit of a man cos it weren’t technically an affair.

  Turns out it started as just some little game they played – he calls it “the logical extension of the usual game played out between journalists and spin doctors”. This woman would persuade him to insert random shit into his news stories – bits of song lyrics, for instance, or properly obscure words that they’d sit down and choose together by scoping through the dictionary. He tells you he did all this just to humour her/impress her/game her. And when they were done inserting song lyrics into his stories, they then started inserting cheeky references to places he and her had had lunch together. You figure he basically means places they’d fucked each other, but you don’t call him out on it – better he saves today’s truth quota for more important bits of his story. Anycase, emotional truth is just as important as factual accuracy. Your daddy tells you that, next thing, this woman started to choose the obscure words all by herself and their publication became a precondition for “meeting for lunch”. Then the words became whole sentences in the form of fictional eyewitness quotes. Only reason your dad started getting sus was because even though she was a PR person, she didn’t ask him to insert any spin into his stories when he was writing about one of her clients. And that’s when he realised he’d been played. Pretty soon, he clocked how the same fake eyewitness quotes had been planted in other stories in other publications. Apparently the pattern of duplication was part of the code.

  Cliché #4: He clarifies with a quickness that all this went down many years before him and your mum divorced. Apparently your mummy ain’t never found out – never even suspected. No harm, no foul. Oh, and of course, technically, he weren’t even cheating (see Cliché #2).

  Your daddy carries on busting out clarifications and qualifications, but you already know you ain’t in no position to judge. And not just cos of all them afternoons with Ramona – also your school lessons, your library books, your A-level essays, your daydreams, your class detentions, your Eva Green posters. All your thoughts of life without her. But for some reason, you start weighing up whether maybe you could judge him anyway? Or if not judge him, then at least cross-examinate him? Or if not cross-examinate, then at least interview him?

  “So, there you have it, Dylan. A honeypot. A femme fatale” – aka your daddy’s late entry for Cliché #5. “But once again, son, I cannot stress this enough: all those lunches and dinners were the nearest I ever got to attempting to cheat on your mother. I never did anything like that again and the whole episode had nothing to do with our divorce – it happened many, many years before our divorce.” Your daddy no longer leaning on the trolley now. “In fact, if anything, it actually helped our marriage because afterwards I realised what I stood to lose and I put all of my energies into our marriage – your mother and I grew a lot closer as a result of all this.” Ding! Cliché #6.

  And this is when it finally hits you. “Have you been trying to keep all this hidden cos you didn’t want Naliah to find out? Daddy? You’re worried she won’t give you her mother’s hand in marriage if she knew that, once upon a time, you tried to cheat on your first wife.”

  “Please, Dylan, I already told you: I’ve been trying to keep this hidden because these people are dangerous and not to be trusted and they mean business.” He turns to face the bed-frames-cum-shelving. “Though now that you mention it, son, I would very much prefer it if Naliah and her mother never found out about this. Not a word of it – you understand? After all, you know what people say: if you marry a man who cheats on his wife then you’re marrying a man who cheats on his wife.”

  After that, just the sound of portable power generators buzzing and crackling – like them special lights for killing insects. But despite all this crackling and glitching, the lighting in the tunnel stays steady – like it’s being powered by something else and the generators are there just for sound.

  The light means you don’t need the flashlight.

  So why the fuck are you picking up the flashlight?

  Why switch the thing on and shine it onto your daddy’s pulsating face?

  “But why, Daddy?” you ask.

  “You mean why should you keep this a secret from Naliah? What more reason do you want, Dylan? Do you want me to give you some money? Is that it?”

  “Ain’t gonna tell Naliah nothing, okay – I told you before, I’ve got zero interest in fucking up your shit. Far as I’m concerned, your relationship with Naliah’s mum is the best thing about you. When I asked you why, Daddy, I meant why – as in, why did you do this?” You shine the torch onto the newspaper lying open at one of his blacked-out stories. “This, Daddy – why this?”

  “But I just told you why. My stories were redacted as they contained fake content
because some honeypot PR person used me to plant secret messages in them. Messages for bog-standard illegal activities.”

  “But why, Daddy?”

  “You mean why did I attempt to have an extramarital affair?”

  Truth is, you actually ain’t got no idea why you keep asking why, like some whining five-year-old. Next, the torch shines onto his throat and you end up asking why again – like as if the reason you keep asking him shit has got something to do with the torch.

  “But why, Daddy?”

  “How the hell do I know? How does any man really know exactly why these things happen – why they have an affair or they attempt to have an attempted affair or whatnot. There are always so many different factors involved.”

  “But why, Daddy?”

  Now a lecture on all the complicated factors that push men to have extramarital affairs. The fucker even tries blame-shifting onto the women. You figure you should spit in disgustment or someshit, but the pink neon lights would probly make it look like you was just spitting out some premasticated bubblegum.

  “But why, Daddy?”

  Or maybe you’re just saving your spitting for later? Maybe you know on some deep down down-low that there’s way more messed-up shit still to come.

  “I keep telling you I don’t know why, because affairs are complicated and so I genuinely don’t know, Dylan.”

  “But why, Daddy?”

  Stop beating around the bullshit, Daddy.

  Just cos you covered it up in extramarital ejaculate, Daddy, it’s still basically whitewashing.

  “Oh come on, son. This is getting tiresome. Or, wait a second – are you asking me why your mother and I got divorced? Because if so, then I’ve told you before and I can tell you again with certainty that we just gradually grew apart. It had nothing to do with my attempt to have an attempted affair – as I’ve already said, that whole episode happened many years before the divorce.” He picks up the newspaper lying open at one of his blacked-out stories. “Why don’t you just shine your torch on the date of this paper. See? That proves beyond a doubt – to both of us – that my attempted affair was many, many years before the divorce. And, as I said earlier, if anything, it actually helped our marriage … ”

  The portable power generators start making a powering-down sound before suddenly booting up again. And, once again, their sounds and their struggles make fuck all difference to the neon strip lights – i.e. you don’t even need this stupid torch. And you deffo don’t need to be pointing it back at your dad. Flicking it up and down across different parts of his body.

  “But why, Daddy?”

  “For fuck’s sake, I don’t know, son. Maybe it just felt like that other woman and I had some kind of special chemistry. Or maybe I just liked who I was better whenever I was with her. Maybe I felt less alone, less bored. Or maybe it was just something to do with her face. Or maybe it was her hair. Or her legs or her backside or her breasts … ”

  “Her breasts?”

  “Or her backside. Or her hips. Or her personality, Dylan. I keep telling you I don’t know. I can’t remember. I don’t know.”

  “But then why even mention this other woman’s breasts?”

  “Because. Just because. Look, Dylan, some men get turned on by a woman’s legs, other men get turned on by her breasts or by the back of her neck or her backside or buttocks. Others get turned on by her face, her eyes, or her shoulders, or her midriff, her hips, or her hair … ”

  “Daddy, I think you and I need to have a really long father–son chat about the objectification of women’s bodies.”

  “Or even her personality, Dylan – her inner beauty. Equally, some men will get turned on by other men – by another man’s pectorals, or his jawline, or maybe even his penis. And other men get turned on by a woman’s smell. Apparently some sick perverts even get turned on by feet. But I suppose if you’re going to put me on the spot like this and force me to play pin the donkey, then I’d have to say I’ve always been into women’s breasts. And, yes, the woman I attempted to have an affair with, she happened to have nice breasts. But, hey, that’s just me, Dylan. So sue me – I hear from Naliah that you’re one of those people who are into feet.”

  This time when the portable power generators go down, they take the lights with them. You point the flashlight at the neon strip lights like as if you’re trying to give them some kinda transfusion. By the time you point the thing back at your old man again, your daddy lets out a high-pitched groan. Just a short burst – almost like a laugh. But it ain’t no laugh.

  It deffo ain’t no laugh.

  “Dylan,” he goes, “I think maybe there’s something I need say to you.” Your daddy sits his butt down on a stack of newspapers. “But I need to try and think clearly here, son. So, please, just help me by not confusing me. Don’t confuse the chronology of things by continually bringing up my affair and my fake stories. It doesn’t help me think clearly if you keep bringing up things that have nothing to do with this.”

  “To do with what, Daddy?”

  “You know what I’m talking about, Dylan.”

  “Actually, I don’t have a fucking clue.”

  He facepalms, but not in a gif way. “Oh no. No, no, no, Dylan – you really don’t know, do you? Your mother never told you. I just assumed that eventually she would have.” Your daddy busts out a handkerchief. Doesn’t wipe his nose or his eyes, though, just holds it against his chest. “Dylan, do you remember when you were six years old and we drove you to Birmingham one summer to stay with your cousins and your Uncle Deepak? You remember? This was about two years before our divorce and a good few years after my attempted affair. And yet do you remember what we told you?”

  “You told me it was cos you and mum were having arguments with each other.”

  “And didn’t you ever think it strange that we’d burden you by even telling you that much? After all, you were just a little boy.”

  Looking back on it now, only thing that seemed strange to you was how little they argued when you got back to Acton. As if by some marriage guidance miracle all their beef with each other had been eaten up.

  “The fact is our marriage was better than ever in those days. If anything, the only thing we were arguing about was whether or not to send you to Birmingham. I wanted that we should tell you what was really happening. But, you see, your mother didn’t want to upset you – you used to get so clingy and worried about her dying in an accident or whatnot. You’d come crying to our bedroom in the middle of the night sometimes. Said you’d had a nightmare that Mummy had died. You were just five – you were still wetting the bed and she didn’t want to make things worse. So she didn’t want to tell you that she’d got sick.”

  “What sick? How sick?”

  This time your daddy facepalms with his handkerchief, like he’s hiding from the flashlight.

  “What sort of sickness was it, Dad?”

  “Come on. Take a guess.”

  “What are you talking about? Mummy got sick when I was nine. That’s two years after you and she divorced. Not two years before. Two years after.” Your daddy waits for you to finish. “Dad, I was nine. Not five. Nine. No way I could forget how old I was when my mum died.”

  “Died? What? We’re talking about when she first got sick.”

  You tell him he knows what you mean. You tell him again that you were nine.

  “Listen to me, Dylan. That isn’t true. Don’t you see? The first time your mummy told you she had cancer was actually the second time she had cancer. Likewise, the second time she told you she had it was actually the third time, the third the fourth, the fourth the fifth, and so on. Do you follow me, son?”

  “But then where was it? The first one. Which bit of her body was it? Hey? Was it her legs? Her hips? Her shoulders? Back of her neck? Her feet? Her hair? Tell me, Daddy, which bit of her body?”

  “Come on, Dylan. It was her breast, of course.”

  “Well then that’s obviously bullshit, Daddy. Cos I was with her throu
gh both her breast cancers – both her mastectomies. And, anyway, I shouldn’t even be talking to you about her breasts.”

  “For her first surgery she just had the lump removed – a lumpectomy, not a full mastectomy. We even thought it might be benign. Oh, damn me even more – maybe limiting it to a lumpectomy was just for my benefit? Either way, the point is she didn’t want to tell you. And then she decided that she didn’t even want to tell your masi or any of your other aunties and uncles. As I understand, you’re also very good at not telling people about her illness. Anyway, she had a course of radiotherapy while you were staying in Birmingham. We thought she was cured. But clearly it came back again two years after we divorced. Which is why the first time your mother told you she was sick was actually the second time she was sick, the second was the third, the third the fourth and so on.”

  You scroll through your memories – your thoughts, your messages, videos, fotos. First comes the how, then the why. How she’d always let you go with her for her scans, chemo and physio appointments, but never ever to the routine annual one-on-ones with her consulting oncologist. How she sent you away from her hospital bedside whenever anyone with a clipboard started talking about her histology. How she came back from work that time just to get a login password she’d scribbled on the back of her medical records instead of just phoning and asking you to read it out to her.

  But why keep it on the hush? Why hadn’t she just clued you in herself when you was old enough to hear it – say, when you were eleven or twelve? You lost count of her tumours after tumour number seven anyway, so what the hell difference would one more have made?

  You realise you already know why.

  Knew it almost straight away.

  No need to guess when it comes to your mum – never no need to ask, “But why, Mummy?” You’ve always known why with her, and she’s always known the why of it with you. She’d kept it hush to protect you – cos delaying her sickness’s start date would basically lengthen her life expectancy. Cos even when you been her full-on carer, she still be helping you change your own sheets whenever you drenched the bed with your own cold sweats.