One Brother Shy

by Terry Fallis

  “I said yes before even thinking about it. But I have to get there, fast,” she replied.

  “How come?”

  “The office is opening sooner than they planned because we just landed a huge security contract with Heathrow. I’m going to help customize Gold to Heathrow’s specific needs. Holy shit, I’m going to London.”

  My phone rang. It was Carleen. We spoke for just a few seconds, then I hung up.

  “Maybe I’m going to London, too,” I said as I stood up.

  I knocked on Carleen’s glass door.

  “Come on in, Alex,” she said.

  I entered and sat down.

  “Alex, first of all, welcome back. How are you?”

  “Thanks, Carleen. I’m quite well, in fact. It was a very good trip and I got done everything I hoped and needed to get done. And I’m back feeling very good, actually,” I replied.

  “I’m glad. I like the new look. You seem, I don’t really know, but you seem somehow more present,” she said. “Anyway, I have a proposition for you, and this comes straight from Vancouver.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Alex, we’d like you to take over Simone’s role managing the software team, on an acting basis to start, but with the full intention of moving you into the role permanently if it all goes well. And I think it will go well.”

  Holy shit.

  “Wow” was all I could muster.

  —

  I don’t remember much about the next three weeks. Four days after Simone Ashe flamed out, Abby packed up and moved to London. I went suitcase shopping with her one evening after work. I also took her plants off her hands. That was not good news for her plants. And I drove her to the airport. She held on to me for quite a long time before lining up to board. It felt nice. She was filled with excitement and trepidation about her new role, whereas I was firmly in the trepidation camp about mine.

  I didn’t have much time to miss Abby, but enough for it to register. I stuck with my acting exercise, trying my best to act how I wanted to be even if it was just acting. It seemed to help. I had to force myself to meet with the coding team. To make it easier, we met in small groups and one-on-one rather than the mass gatherings that Simone had always inflicted. It took more of my time, but less of everyone else’s. But I think we achieved more in those smaller meetings than we would have in a larger gathering.

  I’d been staying in close touch with Matthew and our father through various communications devices and apps. With Dad, it was mostly texts on his safe phone. But with Matt, FaceTime was our preferred method. Even though we were both swamped in our respective jobs, we never let more than two days slip by before we connected again. He was thrilled about my promotion. The funding from Stephanie Mosel arrived shortly after the paperwork was signed. Innovatengage was on its way to a whole new stage in its start-up journey.

  The following Thursday, just before quitting time, Carleen called me in to her office. As I sat down in front of her, she activated her speakerphone and dialed.

  “We’re calling Stephen,” she said as the phone rang in Vancouver.

  I’d met Stephen Collinson, Facetech’s CEO, when he’d come to Ottawa not long after I was hired. I’d avoided him ever since and had never had a real conversation with him.

  “Collinson,” said the voice on the speakerphone.

  “Hi, Stephen, it’s Carleen and I’ve got Alex MacAskill here with me. You’re on speakerphone.”

  “Okay, great,” Stephen said. “Hi, Alex. Thanks for making some time for us this afternoon.”

  Well, despite my instincts, I didn’t think declining a call with the CEO was a very good idea.

  “No problem,” I replied.

  “Listen, Alex, you’ve done a great job picking up the pieces after Simone left. By all accounts, the team has pulled together, you’ve all dug deep, and Gold is now out there and getting rave reviews from our beta testers. Plus, Carleen tells me the coding group is much happier with you at the helm.”

  Actually, they’re happier simply because Simone is no longer at the helm. You could have put a three-toed sloth in charge and they would have been happier.

  “It’s a very good team. I’m just letting them do what they do best,” I replied.

  By then, I knew what was coming. What I suddenly didn’t know was how I felt about it.

  “Anyway, let’s get down to it,” Stephen said. “Alex, we’d like you to take on the role permanently. Carleen has been telling me for a couple of weeks now how you’ve really stepped up and become a leader. For us, promoting someone from within is always our preferred approach. So congratulations. We can officially remove the ‘acting’ from your title and etch what’s left in stone.”

  Thanks so much, Stephen, but I’m feeling profoundly ambivalent about it all and I don’t really know why. And by the way, I think “acting” will always be an appropriate word to associate with me and my working life.

  “Thanks so much, Stephen, I’m feeling, um, good about what we’ve accomplished so far, and excited about what lies ahead.”

  “Good. Carleen is authorized to handle the negotiations with you, so I’ll drop off now,” said Facetech’s CEO. “Thanks for your great work in a difficult time.”

  He hung up, leaving Carleen beaming at me.

  “Well, after the Simone fiasco, it’s nice to have some really good news to break to an outstanding employee,” she said.

  It’s wonderful but why do I feel so unmoved by it all?

  “Um, Carleen, I really do appreciate this opportunity. It’s kind of what I’ve been working towards. But do you mind, before we negotiate and actually do the etching it in stone thing, if I mull it all over a bit? There’s a lot going on and I’d just like to sleep on it for a night.”

  “Of course, Alex. We can talk in the morning,” Carleen said. “But just to help with your deliberations, here are the compensation terms, base and bonus, we were hoping to agree on. And of course, Simone’s office is yours, too.”

  She slid a sheet of paper over to me. I glanced at the numbers before rising to my feet. Wow.

  —

  I didn’t sleep much that night. I tossed and turned, waffled and wavered, and finally fell asleep around 3:30 a.m. I woke up the next morning with a clear head, thinking about my mother. She’d raised me in that very apartment. It must have been so difficult at times. What an extraordinary sacrifice, made for me.

  I went to the office, sat down with Carleen, and resigned.

  As I walked out of the Facetech office for the last time, my personal possessions in a banker’s box I found in the storeroom, I knew I’d made the right call. Five minutes before I broke the news to Carleen, I wasn’t at all certain about my decision. Five minutes later, certainty arrived and that’s what I etched in stone that morning.

  I offered Malaya anything she wanted from the apartment. Anything at all. I insisted. Other than my bed, she took almost everything else – the living room couch and chair, the TV, the kitchen table and chairs, dishes, flatware, even the area rugs. She was almost overwhelmed. She claimed to be enjoying her new patient but said there would never be anyone like my mother. I agreed.

  Save for one large suitcase holding my clothes, books, and some personal mementos by which to remember my mother, I drove the remaining contents of the apartment to a local women’s shelter. They were very happy to take towels, two nightstands, my bed, and some framed artwork of dubious provenance. My landlord wasn’t quite as understanding as Abby’s. There were three months left on the lease until our annual renewal. I paid the three months without complaint. I also made arrangements with my bank so I could transact business remotely until I’d firmed up my plans. It only took about four days and I was free and clear. My final act before departure was to drive my car to Malaya’s apartment. She met me outside. She looked puzzled when I gave her my car keys.

  “The car is yours, Malaya. I’m going away for a while and have no need of it. It’s yours,” I said.

  She shook
her head and tried to hand the keys back. But I wouldn’t take them.

  “No, it’s yours now. The insurance is paid up for two more years. I’ve already started the process of transferring the ownership and insurance over to you,” I said. “You do have your driver’s licence, don’t you?”

  She nodded, still holding the keys, looking bewildered.

  “And this is for you,” I said, handing her an envelope. “Just think of it as a bonus for all the extra time you spent with my mother and because of how much you did for both of us. My mother was very grateful you were there. I was too.”

  She opened the envelope and gasped when she saw the cheque for $10,000. She started to give it back to me, but I held my ground. By this stage, she was weeping. I hoped it might be enough to bring her family to Canada.

  —

  I decided on the same approach I’d adopted the first time. No heads-up. No warning. Just arrive and go with it. I stepped off the elevator wheeling my giant brand-new Mini Cooper–sized suitcase behind me. When I came through the door, Karen looked up, did a double take, but recovered quickly.

  “Alex, you’re back,” she said. “Great to see you, again. Were we expecting you back so soon?”

  “Hi, Karen. No, this is kind of a surprise. I see Matt is in his office.” I looked to the far end where Matt was hunched over his desk, absorbed in whatever was on his laptop screen.

  “Go on down,” she replied. “He’ll be thrilled to see you. He’s been moping around ever since you left.”

  I left my suitcase in the closet and walked down to Matt’s office. His door was open. He was obviously fully focused and he did not look up from his screen.

  “Still got an opening for an R&D lead?” I asked from the doorway.

  Now Matt looked up.

  “Are you serious?”

  I nodded. Then he jumped up, came around his desk, and gave me a hug.

  “Welcome back, brother,” he said. “Did you just quit your job, pack up your troubles, pull a Dick Whittington, and move to London?”

  Dick Whittington, whoever he is, was not involved in any way.

  “I guess I did,” I said.

  “Yes!” he said with a fist pump. “I somehow knew you would.”

  “Well, I’m glad you did. I just figured it out,” I replied. “Anyway, have you seen Dad lately?” I asked.

  “At least once a week since you left,” Matt replied. “It’s really been wonderful. I really like him. Very, very smart. You know, he’s moving up his retirement so that he and we can come out of the closet.”

  “I heard. He emailed me about it.”

  “Does he know you’re back?” Matt asked.

  “No. As I said, it was a pretty fast decision. Even I didn’t know until a few days ago.”

  “I want to hear all the gory details. But in the meantime, let me show you your new office,” he said, leading the way down the hall and into a slightly smaller, but still very nice office next door to Isabella’s.

  “I hope this will be satisfactory,” Matt said.

  “Anything more than a desk and a fraying fabric partition is a step up.”

  Matt gave me an extra key to his condo and I left him at the office. I unloaded my suitcase at Matt’s. My plan was to squat in his condo only until I could find my own in the area. I took a quick nap at Matt’s but woke up around seven.

  Matt was tied up that night at an event. He’d asked if I wanted to go, but I declined. My initial plan had been to crash and try to catch up on my sleep. But by 7:30 or so, something else pushed its way to the top of my priority list. I pulled the address out of my wallet and plugged it into my iPhone map app. As luck would have it, it wasn’t that far away, though it would have taken a longish Underground journey on three different lines. I called a cab instead.

  It was about 8:15 p.m. when I arrived. It was a two-storey walk-up with two doors, one for the ground-floor apartment and the other for the second-floor flat. But before I did anything else, I slipped into the role of the Alex I really wanted to be. Then I rang the doorbell for the upstairs flat. After a moment, I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. The door opened and there she was. I was still tired and not at my most creative, so I regressed into cliché.

  “Hello, stranger.”

  “Ack!” Abby cried. “Alex! It’s you. You’re here! What the flork!”

  She wrapped me up in a bear hug and rocked me a little bit on the front porch. Then she took my hand and led me up the stairs to her flat.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” she said. “Wait a minute. Why are you here?”

  “It’s a long story, but to cut it short, three days ago, I resigned from Facetech. They offered me Simone’s job but I just realized there really wasn’t anything keeping me in Ottawa any longer. So I’ll be running R&D for my brother’s company.”

  “Wait, you’ve moved here? You’re living in London, now? Permanently?”

  “Yep.”

  “WoooooFuckinHooooo!” she said, leaping to her feet and bouncing up and down for a bit. “That is so so great. I’ve been missing, um, hanging out together.”

  “I’ve missed it, too,” I said. “I can’t imagine anyone in the new Facetech London office is anywhere near as cool as we are.”

  “You got that right,” she agreed. “But they’re nice enough, and the work is cool. But now, you’re here. That is fruckin’ amazing.”

  “Well, that’s what I was going for,” I replied. “Fruckin’ amazing.”

  Neither of us knew many people in London, so we ended up hanging out a lot together. She made me laugh, and I did my best to sustain eye contact with her. I really liked spending time with her even though we seemed to be keeping it all on the platonic plane. I introduced her to Matt and our father. They both really liked her wit and spirit.

  Life at Innovatengage was wonderful. Matt would just talk to me about what the platform should be able to do in the future. He wanted it to be as versatile and flexible as possible so we could accommodate any organization’s engagement needs. I started working with the existing platform running on its own server, for the exclusive use of the entire R&D team. In case I hadn’t made it clear, I am the entire R&D team. I would then write the code to add new and different cool features. Then I’d show Matt what it would do.

  About a week after I’d arrived back in London, Matt popped his head into my office.

  “Hey, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Jackson Trent died yesterday in Ottawa.”

  “I know,” I replied. “Cam Forster emailed me this morning.”

  “Me too,” Matt said. “You may want to…”

  “Send flowers,” I interrupted. “I know. I already have, anonymously.”

  “Probably wise.”

  —

  That night, I took Abby for dinner at the William Blake, not because the food is so wonderful, but so I could show her exactly where I’d first laid eyes on Matthew Paterson. We sat in the same booth. It was odd and wonderful being there with Abby. She was loving her gig at Facetech-London, and doing well. After we’d finished dessert and were just enjoying our wine and one another, I thought the time was right.

  “I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I want to tell you something about me,” I opened. “It’s something that happened to me almost ten years ago.”

  She raised her hand.

  “Alex, I know. In 2005, you starred in a very short film known as ARCHangel that has enjoyed a good run on YouTube. It messed you up a bit for the last ten years but now you seem to be getting past it and getting on with your life. How’d I do?”

  I just stared at her.

  “Alex, your mouth is open. Do you want more dessert?”

  I closed my mouth.

  “How did you know that?” I asked.

  “Alex, I’ve known for a long time. Lots of people know. Lots of people don’t know. But it was a very, very long time ago,” she said. “Now don’t go thinking I’m minimizing what it was like, or even what
it must still be like. I know it was capital F fucking horrific. I know it fucked up your life for a while, as it would anyone. How could it not? But it happened. That can’t be changed.”

  Then she reached over and held my hand, using her thumb to massage the top.

  “I know it’s easy for me to say these things, but please do not let that event a decade ago define you. Do not wear it every day,” she said. “A ten-year-old YouTube clip is not the boss of you.”

  That made me smile. In fact, it made me laugh. She laughed too. And she was still holding my hand.

  “You made that very easy,” I said. “And ever since I met you, you’ve been helping me get past what we always called in our household Gabriel.”

  “Gabriel,” Abby repeated.

  I scanned the rest of the pub and found what I needed. I stepped out of the booth and onto the patio area out front, where I snagged a stainless steel ashtray and brought it back to our booth.

  “I wanted you to be here when I did this,” I said.

  I pulled a folded paper from my jacket pocket and flattened it out on the table.

  “My mother put this away for me shortly after Gabriel went down, in more ways than one, on December 24, 2005.”

  “What’s with the match?” Abby asked.

  I said nothing, but peeled the tape away from the program to free the wooden match. I set the program in the ashtray, struck the match on the rough underside of the table, ignited the corner of the paper, and extinguished the match. We both leaned back in our seats to avoid the flames that rose a little higher than I’d expected. It burned bright, but quickly, and was smouldering ash in seconds.

  “With you as my witness, I solemnly declare that officially, Gabriel is no longer the boss of me,” I intoned.

  Abby laughed and held both my hands. At that precise moment, the William Blake’s acutely sensitive smoke alarm blared. We left money on the table, dumped the ashes in a garbage can by the door, and made good our escape. We walked, holding hands, all the way back to her flat. I didn’t leave till morning.

  THE END

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS