by Dan Chaon
In fact, Ryan had already developed an attachment to Kasimir Czernewski, who had been born in Ukraine, and Ryan parted his hair down the middle and wore a pair of black glasses when he had the driver’s license photo taken. Jay showed him how easy it was to establish certain other elements: a fake address—an apartment in Wauwatosa, just outside of Milwaukee; and a job, working from home as a “private investigator” with a specialty in identity theft fraud; and a taxpayer ID; and a dummy website for this fake business; and sometimes people even sent emails to Kasimir’s website.
Dear Mr. Czernewski,
I found your website and I seek help regarding the possibility of identity theft. I believe that a person or persons are using my name for the purpose of committing fraud. I have received bills for purchases that I have never made, and money is missing from several of my savings accounts, withdrawals that I never made—
As for Jay, he now had perhaps several hundred “avatars” that he had developed—practically a whole village worth of fake people, discreetly conducting various kinds of commerce from fake addresses in Fresno and Omaha; Lubbock, Texas; and Cape May, New Jersey. Basically all over the map, and layered in such a way, Jay said, interwoven so that even if one were discovered to be false, it would only lead to another counterfeit, another clone, a series of mazes that all led to dead ends.
Who would guess that these dozens of lives were emanating from a cabin in the woods north of Saginaw, Michigan?
It was snowing more heavily now, and Ryan was lucky to have arrived back at the cabin before the storm hit. The place was pretty isolated—a ways off the main highway, through a warren of county two-lane highways and up a narrow asphalt road, nothing but a tangle of trees and shadows until at last the cabin emerged, with Jay’s old boxy Econoline van in the driveway.
The cabin was nondescript. A simple one-story, one-bedroom house with log siding and a screened-in porch in front with an old couch and a woodstove; it looked like one of those places weekend fishermen went to back in the 1970s, and it had the smell of damp cedar and mildewed blankets that Ryan associated with almost-forgotten Boy Scout camp buildings.
Out beyond the porch there was a clearing in the woods and the snowflakes fluttered carelessly, curiously, in little wind trails that led at last to accumulations. It hadn’t been snowing in Milwaukee when he left, but it might be now. It might be snowing in Chicago, too, in Evanston where his parents would soon be arriving for his memorial service, a drowsy layer tucking itself over the tarmac of the O’Hare airport as their plane circled.
Jay had dozed off on the porch in the heat of the stove, and a cigarette was still pinched between his fingers, which Ryan reached over and gently removed, and a cylinder of cold ash broke off and fell onto the floor. “Mm,” Jay said, and pressed his cheek against his own shoulder as if it were a pillow he was nuzzling.
Ryan got up and went into the living room, where a cirrus layer of smoke was still hovering over the clustered tables—dozens of computers and scanners and fax machines and other equipment—and he took a mohair blanket off of the couch and went back and draped it over Jay.
He was slightly drunk himself, slightly stoned, and he drew out another beer from the Styrofoam ice chest. He was trying not to get too anxious, but he was more and more aware that what had happened was truly permanent.
He sat down at one of the computers with his can of beer beside the keyboard and logged on to the Internet and typed his name to see if anyone else had written about his death on their blog or whatever.
But there was nothing new.
Soon, he thought, his name would call forth fewer and fewer results. The tributes would slow to a trickle in a matter of days, and before long any mention of him would be archived and pushed deeper under sedimentary layers of information and gossip and journal entries until he essentially disappeared altogether.
He was thinking about his father.
His father—his adoptive father, Owen—had been going through some mood swings during Ryan’s senior year in high school, some gloomy middle-aged forty-five-year-old man thing, and while Ryan’s mother obsessed about colleges and so forth, Owen had looked on wordlessly. He had gotten into the habit of the heavy sigh, and Ryan would say:
“What?”
And he would say: “Oh … nothing.” Sigh.
One night they were standing at the kitchen sink, the two of them washing dishes, his mom in the living room watching her favorite comedy on TV and Owen had let out another one of his melancholic exhalations.
Ryan was drying the plates and putting them away in the cabinet and he said: “What?”
Owen shook his head. “Oh … nothing,” he said, and then he paused to contemplate the casserole dish he was scrubbing. He shrugged.
“This is stupid,” Owen said. “I was just thinking: how many more times in my life will we stand here together washing dishes?”
“Mm,” said Ryan—since washing dishes was not something he would miss, actually—but he was aware that Owen was in the midst of some morbid calculation.
Owen shifted. Grimaced over a stubborn bit of noodle that he was trying to scrape off. “I guess,” he said, “I don’t think I’ll see you very much after you go off to college. That’s all.
“I can see how restless you are, buddy. And there’s nothing wrong with that—I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that!” Owen said. “I wish I’d been so restless, back when I was your age. The way I’m going, I probably won’t even manage to see an ocean before I die. But I’ll bet you’ll see them all. The seven seas—and all the continents—and I just want you to know that I think that’s a great thing.”
“Maybe,” Ryan had said then, and he felt himself stiffening into an uncomfortable formality, embarrassed by Owen’s self-depreciation, his maudlin middle-aged self-pity. “I don’t know,” Ryan said. “I’m sure there are more dishes to be washed together,” he said lightly.
But, thinking back, he couldn’t help but reflect on such moments—the kitchen in the house in Council Bluffs, the dishes in the sink, specific pieces of silverware he would have been drying that he recalled now with an unexplainable fondness, specific plates—
All the stuff he had left behind. The black Takamine acoustic-electric dreadnought guitar Owen and Stacey had bought for his birthday; the notebook full of tabs and lyrics for songs he was trying to write; even mix CDs he’d made, these incredible mixes that now he probably couldn’t re-create. It was silly—a childish, morbid nostalgia—that an ache should open up when he thought about that guitar; or when he thought about his pet turtle, Veronica, not even a real pet. What did she care about him, what did she remember?
All these objects, which were themselves like avatars—holding his old self, his old life, inside them.
Okay, he thought. He sat there staring at the computer screen, the photograph and obituary in the Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil. Okay.
The life he had been leading up until now was actually over.
He would never be seen or heard from again. Not as himself, at least.
12
Lucy and George Orson were walking down the dirt road that led to the basin where the lake used to be. Nebraska was still in a drought. It hadn’t rained in who knew how long, and puffs of dust rose up from beneath the edges of their foot soles.
Yet another week had passed, and still there was no sign that they would be leaving, despite George Orson’s assurances. Something had gone wrong, Lucy assumed. There was some problem with the money, though he wouldn’t admit it. “Don’t worry,” he kept telling her. “Everything is perfectly fine, just a little slower than I thought, a little more—recalcitrant.” But then he let out one of his gloomy laughs, which didn’t reassure her at all. It sounded so unlike him.
For the past week or so, George Orson had not been himself. This by his own admission: “I’m sorry,” he would tell her, when he spaced out, when he strayed off into a distant galaxy, in a trance of private calculations.
“George,” she would say, “what are you thinking about? What are you thinking about right now?”
And his eyes would regain their focus. “Nothing,” he’d say.
“Nothing important. I’m just feeling out of sorts. I’m not myself lately, I guess—”
Which was just a figure of speech, she knew, but it stuck with her. Not himself, she thought, and in fact a certain slippage was noticeable—as if, she thought, he were an actor who had begun to lose track of his character’s motivation, and even his accent seemed to have changed slightly, she thought. His vowels were looser—was she imagining this?—and his enunciation wasn’t as crisp and elegant.
Surely it was natural that his voice would become more casual, as he was no longer a teacher, no longer performing in front of a class. And it was natural that a person would turn out to be a little different when you really got to know them. No one was exactly what you thought they would be.
But still, she had begun to pay closer attention to such things. Perhaps, she thought, it was her own fault that she didn’t know what was going on. She had been in a dreamworld for too many days now, almost two weeks’ worth of watching movies, reading, fantasizing about travel. So focused on the future places that they were going to go to that she hadn’t been paying attention to what was happening in the present.
For example: that morning, she had come into the bathroom and George Orson was leaning over the sink, and when he glanced up she saw that he had shaved off his beard. Actually—briefly—she didn’t even recognize him, it was as if there were an unfamiliar man standing there and she’d actually let out a gasp, she’d actually flinched.
And then she saw his eyes, his green eyes, and the face had reconstituted itself: George Orson.
“Oh my God, George,” she said, and put her hand to her chest. “You startled me! I hardly recognized you.”
“Hmm,” George Orson said, moodily. He didn’t smile, or even soften his expression. He just gazed down into the sink, where his hair had made a nest in the basin.
“Sorry,” he said distractedly, and ran his fingers underneath his eyes, passing his palm slowly down his bare cheeks. “Sorry to startle you.”
Lucy peered at him—this new face—uncertainly. Was he—had he been crying?
“George,” she said, “is there a problem?”
He shook his head. “No, no,” he said. “Just—decided it was time for a change, that’s all.”
“You seem,” she said, “upset or something.”
“No, no,” he said. “It’s just a mood. I’ll get over it.”
He continued to peer at himself in the mirror, and she continued to hesitate in the doorway of the bathroom, observing warily as he lifted a pair of scissors and cut off a piece of hair, just above his ear.
“You know,” she said, “it’s not a great idea to cut your own hair. I know that from experience.”
“Hmm,” he said. “You know what I’ve always told you. I don’t believe in regrets.” He lifted his chin, examining his profile in the way a woman might examine her makeup. He made a grimace at himself. Then he smiled brightly. Then he tried to look surprised.
“‘Regrets are idle,’” he said at last. “‘Yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently.’”
He gave his reflection a small, wistful smile.
“It’s a good quote, isn’t it?” he said. “Charles Dudley Warner, a very quotable old buzzard. Friend of Mark Twain. Totally forgotten, these days.”
He cut off another piece of hair, this time on the other side of his head, working the scissors in a slow, ruminant line.
“George,” she said, “come over here and sit down. Let me do that.”
He shrugged. Whatever mood he was in had begun to dissipate—the quote, she guessed, had cheered him up, being able to name a famous person and produce some tidbit of trivia. That made him happy.
“Okay,” he said, at last. “Just a trim. A little bit off the sides.”
And so now, a few hours later, they were walking silently, and George Orson had taken her hand as they wended their way down the tire track grooves that were still worn into the ground, though it was clear that it had been a long time since a car had come this way.
“Listen,” he said, at last, after they had gone on wordlessly for a while. “I just wanted to thank you for being patient with me. Because I know you’ve been frustrated, and there have been things that I haven’t been able to tell you about. As much as I would like to. There are just elements that I haven’t quite figured out myself yet, completely.”
She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. He just kept walking, and his fingers played along the surface of her palm reassuringly.
“Elements?” she said. She had forgotten her sunglasses, and he had remembered his, and she squinted, exasperated, at the dark reflective circles over his eyes. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“I know,” he said. He tilted his head ruefully. “I know, it sounds like bullshit, and I’m truly sorry. I know that you’re nervous, and I wouldn’t blame you if you’re thinking about just—packing up and leaving. I mean, I’m grateful that you haven’t left already. And that’s why I wanted to tell you that I honestly appreciate the fact that you trust me.”
“Hmm,” Lucy said. But she didn’t respond. She had never been the type who accepted vague assurances. If, for example, her mother had made such a speech to her in that reasonable, gently hopeful voice, Lucy would have been goaded immediately into a fury. There was plenty for her to worry about—obviously! It was ridiculous that they had been here in this place for two weeks and he still hadn’t explained what he was up to. She had a right to know! Where was the money coming from? Why was it “recalcitrant”? What was he trying to “figure out,” exactly? If her mother had dragged her out to the end of the world without a word of explanation, they would have been arguing constantly.
But she didn’t say anything.
George Orson wasn’t her mother, nor did she want him to be. She didn’t want him to see her in the way her mother had seen her. Bratty. Demanding. Mouthy. A know-it-all. Immature. Impatient. These were among the qualities her mother had accused her of over the years.
And it was her mother’s words she would think of when he emerged at last from the study in the late afternoon. She spent her days watching boring old movies, reading books, playing solitaire, wandering around the house and so forth, but when he finally showed his face, she tried very hard not to seem irritable.
“I’m going to make you a wonderful dinner,” George Orson said. “Ceviche de Pescado. You’re going to love it.”
And Lucy looked up from watching My Fair Lady for the second time, as if she had been completely absorbed. As if she hadn’t been in a state of grim panic for the better part of the day. She let him bend down and press his lips to her forehead.
“You’re my only one, Lucy,” he whispered.
She wanted to believe it.
Even now, uncertain as she was, there was the grip of his fingers along the center of her palm and the occasional brush of his shoulder against her shoulder and the sheer solidity of his body. His focused presence. A simpleminded comfort, perhaps, but nevertheless it was enough to make her calmer.
There was still the possibility that he would take care of her. Maybe it wasn’t a mistake to come here with him. An idea shooting up a flare into the stark gray expanse of sky. Maybe they were still going to be rich together.
She looked down the twin tire ruts that ran through the brush, shielding her eyes from the wind and dust, making a visor out of the flat of her hand.
“Here,” George Orson said, and handed her his sunglasses, and she accepted.
It’s always the girls who think they are so smart, her mother had told her once. They’re always the biggest fools, in the end.
Which was one of the reasons she hadn’t left yet. The sting of those words still lingered: Girls who think they’re so smart.
And the very idea of returning to Ohio, back to the shack with Patricia. No college, no nothing. How people would laugh at her ego. Her presumption.
It wasn’t as if she were being held here against her will. Hadn’t George Orson always said she could leave whenever she wanted? “Listen, Lucy,” he’d told her—this in the midst of one of the many evasive conversations she’d had with him about their current situation. “Listen,” he said, “I understand that you’re nervous, and I just want you to know, if you ever feel as if you’ve lost your confidence in me, even if you ever decide that this just isn’t working out, you can always go home. Always. I will regretfully but respectfully buy you a plane ticket and send you back to Ohio. Or wherever you want to go.”
So.
So there were alternatives, and over the past days and weeks, she had been evaluating them.
She could almost picture herself getting on a plane; she could imagine herself walking down the aisle and lowering herself at last into a narrow seat next to a smudged window. But where was she going? Back to Pompey? Off to some city? Chicago or New York or
Off to some city where she would
Blank.
It used to be that she was full of ideas about what her future would be like. She was basically a practical person, a person who planned ahead. “Ambitious,” her mother had called her, and it hadn’t been a compliment.
She remembered one night, not long before her parents died, when their father had been teasing Patricia about her pet rats, joking about how the rats might be keeping her from getting a boyfriend, and their mother, who had been watchfully washing dishes in the background, had stepped in abruptly.
“Larry,” Lucy’s mother had said sternly, “you had better be nice to Patricia.” She turned, and waved a sudsy spatula emphatically. “Because I’ll tell you this much: Patricia is going to be the one who will take care of you in your old age. You keep smoking like you do and you’ll be wheeling around an oxygen tank by the time you’re fifty-five, and it’s not going to be Lucy who will be taking you to the doctor and bringing you your groceries, I can tell you that. Once Lucy is out of high school, she’s going to be gone, and then you’re going to be sorry you teased Patricia so much.”