by Jeremy Bates
Although Arthur and I didn’t provoke our father, he’d smack us around too. One night we had been searching the garage for something or other when we’d accidentally knocked a can of white primer paint with a loose lid off of a shelf. It took us about an hour to clean all the paint off the floor, but there was nothing we could do about the huge white stain left behind. As soon as our father got home—late, for it had been one of the bar nights—he burst into our room, eyes blurry from too many pints, face red from all the yelling he was doing. He didn’t ask what happened. Just slid off his belt and began whipping us. When my mother tried to intervene, he threw her aside…which was when he abandoned his sally, got in his car, and left.
Where he went, I had no idea. I suppose a cheap motel, or his partner’s house, as they’d seemed to be pretty chummy. But he didn’t come home for two days.
Victor Green, part-time father and full-time vile human being, was a police officer. On January 14, 2004, he pulled over a dated Tokyo sedan with a non-functioning brake light. Video from his patrol car’s dash-cam showed him approaching the sedan, speaking with the driver, then returning to his car—and the driver bolting on foot. My father’s police report described him catching the man in a parking lot. During the ensuing struggle, the man grabbed his Taser. Fearing for his life, my father withdrew his handgun and shot and killed the guy.
Surveillance footage from a video camera in the parking lot evinced a different version of events.
Specifically, my father shooting the man eight times in his back as he fled.
Two months after this prima facie evidence came to light, a grand jury indicted Victor on several charges, including murder. He was held without bail for six months before being released on bond and confined to house arrest.
A few days before his trial was to begin, he disappeared.
No note, no explanation, nothing. He simply left the house one day and never came back.
I was managing the Four Seasons restaurant and lobby bar then. I often had lunch with Paul, who had recently been promoted to assistant butcher at the Clove and Hoof down the street from the hotel. We spent much of our meals talking about our father. Neither of us were exactly surprised (shocked, yes, but not so much surprised) that he had murdered a man in cold blood. We were inured to his temper and violent side. What we were surprised about was that he had gone on the lam. We might never have gotten to know him well, but as his sons we knew enough about him, and despite all his ugliness, it had never crossed our minds that he was a coward.
My theory had been that our father had fled to either France or Spain, where he could become anonymous in a big city like Paris or Madrid. Paul was convinced he was in Portugal, living hand to mouth in some little-known coastal town.
It was Arthur, home from university over the summer break, who suggested bluntly that our father was dead.
This proved true just a week later. Nearly one month after Victor had walked out on our family without a word, a young Italian couple hiking in the Pyrenees mountains discovered his body hanging from a tree branch—or what was left of his body, as it had been badly decomposed and savaged by wild animals. A coroner confirmed he had died from pressure to his neck consistent with hanging. He pronounced Victor’s death a suicide.
The news barely affected me. I was too angry at my father for taking the easy way out, for leaving a permanent, ghastly scar on our family name…while also breaking my mother’s heart. Despite a marriage defined by my father’s hard drinking and pathological abuse and single-minded selfishness, she’d never stopped loving him.
In the weeks and months after his funeral, Paul, Arthur, and I visited our mother regularly. She put on a strong face for us, but it was clear her health was deteriorating quickly. We urged her to move out of the house. The change, we thought, would be good for her. New place, new neighborhood, new friends.
She refused categorically. She was only fifty-four, yet the lively spark that had animated her had died with her husband, and she seemed suddenly old.
My first three years living overseas in Manila, I returned to Taured every December to spend Christmas with her and my brothers. The fourth year I was unable to make the trip due to an important function in Hong Kong. The following summer I came back for Arthur’s wedding in July—yet that was my final trip home. I would Skype my mother on special occasions and major holidays, but of course this wasn’t the same as being with her in person.
My excuse for my prolonged absence: I was too busy.
Too busy to see my widowed mother. Too busy to see my brothers or my two-year-old niece.
Too. Damned. Busy.
∆∆∆
Opening Skype now, which was already downloaded to the computer’s desktop, I tried logging into my business account. My email address worked, yet my password didn’t. I signed up for a new account, selected Andorra from the Country menu, and punched in my mother’s telephone number.
And got the same message as when I’d dialed her number on Supa-san’s smartphone.
I tried Paul’s number next, then Arthur’s, and went oh-for-three.
I gritted my teeth. Why didn’t their telephone numbers work? Was the reason as simple as my mother and brothers in Taured having different phone numbers than their counterparts in Andorra? They entered the Andorra Nokia store on a Tuesday instead of a Wednesday, as they might have in Taured, and consequently were given different numbers? That seemed a reasonable explanation.
Nevertheless, there was another sinister one that I couldn’t ignore.
The possibility they didn’t exist in Andorra at all.
Perhaps in this dimension my mother’s father, my grandfather, had never met my grandmother. Or perhaps my grandmother had suffered a miscarriage while pregnant with my mother. Or perhaps she’d never become pregnant in the first place.
Any one of these events, or a thousand other seemingly insignificant ones, could have prevented my mother from being born in this dimension, my brothers from being born.
Me from being born.
After contemplating these nihilistic thoughts for several long minutes, I navigated to Facebook. It was the world’s rolodex. You didn’t need passwords or telephone numbers to get in touch with other people. All you needed was a name and a country.
When my login credentials once again proved invalid, I created another new account. In the search bar I typed: Gaston Green Taured. I paused then, deleted Taured, and replaced it with Andorra.
I hit Enter.
A single profile for a Gaston Green from Andorra appeared.
And the man in the thumbnail photograph was me.
Chapter 25
When I clicked on the bite-sized photo of myself, Facebook informed me the profile was private, which prevented me from seeing any posts. Too excited by my progress to be disappointed by the setback, I typed my mother’s name. A single profile for Claire Green Andorra appeared.
The silver-haired, shiny-eyed woman smiling back at me was most definitely my mother.
And her profile wasn’t private.
As I scrolled down through all her recent posts, I marveled at how Tauredian they were. By that I meant nothing stood out as unusual. Everything was exactly as might be expected—photos, names, comments—had I been back home in Manila before any of this inter-dimensional madness began.
Given I could not call her as we were not “Friends,” I clicked the Add Friend button, then the Message button, and typed with trembling fingers:
Hello Mother,
I’ve forgotten my Facebook password and can’t log into my account, which is why I’ve created this new one so I can get in touch with you. I’m in Japan for business right now, though I’ve been having some trouble with immigration. I no longer have my phone either, so please get back to me via this app as soon as you can.
Love,
Gaston
PS: This is really me!
I read the message over a half-dozen times before adding the postscript, since what I’d written sound
ed like an internet scam targeting grandmothers.
Satisfied, I pressed Send.
Standing on matchstick legs, I ran my hands through my hair and paced in the small room, my thoughts racing. When I sat back down slightly more composed, I found a post that both my brothers had commented on, and I spent the next few minutes clicking through to their profiles and sending them messages similar to the one I had sent my mother.
I then conducted a search for my ex-wife, Blessica Villainz. Finding her profile proved more difficult than finding my mother’s since Manila had something like twenty-million residents. Nevertheless, I eventually found the Blessica I was looking for buried on the seventh page of results. I wrote:
Hey Bless,
In Tokyo for business. Lost my phone, wallet, etc. Also, Facebook password’s not working. Please get back to me with a time I can video call you. Really important.
Gaston
I sent the message and began the waiting game.
∆∆∆
I sat in the chair facing the computer screen for twenty minutes—refreshing the web page at least once every sixty seconds to make sure I hadn’t missed a reply—before I got up to walk off my nerves. I ended up down the hallway in a communal kitchen where free soft drinks were on offer. There were also two vending machines, one selling hot and cold cans of coffee, the other, Asahi, Kirin, and Sapporo beer.
I poured myself a Styrofoam cup of Coke and returned to my room. While I was fiddling with the key in the lock, Facebook’s bubbly ringtone announced an incoming call. I burst into the room and dropped into the chair in front of the computer.
I didn’t recognize the number on the popup window but immediately clicked the green answer icon.
“Hello?” I said, realizing I sounded a little bit manic right then. “Hello?” I repeated more calmly. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes, Gaston,” my mother said. “I can hear you fine. But I can’t see you. Gaston? Oh—there you are!”
“I cannot see you,” I said, swallowing hard. “You have to push the little video button.”
“Did that work?”
Her face filled the previously black box on the screen. “Yes, it works!” I exclaimed.
“Are you at one of your events, Gaston? You sound excited.”
My mother looked just as she should, down to her compassionate hazel eyes and choppy silver haircut. “I am in…a hotel room.”
“What are you doing wearing sunglasses in a hotel room? Take them off. They look foolish.”
“My eyes are sensitive to light right now.” I shrugged. “Bad eye drops.”
“Why are you using eye drops in the first place? You shouldn’t be putting anything in your eyes. Is it because of all that traveling you do? Where are you right now? You said you were having immigration trouble?”
“I am in Japan.”
Her lips puckered. “You know, I’m not happy about you traveling to all those foreign countries. They’re dangerous. I worry about you, Gaston. What kind of trouble are you having?”
“Do not worry, please. I am working it out. Where are you?”
“Me?” She blinked in surprise. “Where does it look like I am? I’m at home. Don’t you recognize your old home anymore?”
I didn’t know if I recognized it or not, given I could only see her face and a little bit of the wall behind her head. I said, “How is the weather in Andorra?”
“Cold,” she said, not batting an eyelid at the mention of Andorra. “It’s been raining all week. We’ve needed it. This summer’s been so hot. But there’s nothing to do but stay inside. Are you feeling okay, Gaston? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I am fine, mother,” I said, smiling to mask my despondence. If my mother didn’t find objection to her country being called Andorra, then the nightmare I was experiencing was reality. I could no longer pretend, or wish, otherwise.
“Just a little tired,” I added, still holding onto the smile. “How are you?”
“Oh, you know. I had to go back to the hospital last week because they didn’t get rid of all the cancer—”
“Cancer?” I blurted. “What cancer?”
“Skin cancer,” she stated. “The mole on my shoulder. I got it removed, as well as a second one on my leg. Why do you sound so surprised? We’ve talked about this several times.”
“Skin cancer,” I repeated, relieved.
“Are you okay, Gaston? I’m serious. You seem…I don’t know. It’s this immigration problem you mentioned, isn’t it? Don’t tell me it’s not. I’m not senile yet.”
“I told you, mother, everything is fine.”
“Is it work then? Is that company of yours working you too hard? You need a vacation. You haven’t been home in so long. We all miss you here very much. And Paul’s birthday is coming up. Have you spoken to him?”
“No, not for a while,” I said, feeling guilty as sin. Paul would be turning forty-four. When was the last birthday of his I’d attended?
Would I ever attend another?
Yes, I told myself decisively. Taured might not exist in this world, but Paul clearly did. Once I got out of Japan…
“Is he doing well?” I heard myself asking.
“He seems to be,” my mother said. “Oh, have you heard the news? Bridgette is pregnant again!”
“How fantastic!” I blurted. Bridgette was Paul’s wife. “How far along is she?”
“It’s quite early. They only told me the other week. I think she must be in her third month now. Third or fourth.”
“I will congratulate Paul when I speak with him. Do you have his number?”
“I don’t know it offhand, Gaston. It’s written down in the kitchen. Do you need it right now?”
“If you do not mind. It is in your phone, no?”
“I suppose it is. But I don’t have my phone with me…oh, there’s your father. Let me ask him.”
My thoughts went bright and blank. When the shock subsided, I heard my mother speaking with someone who sounded uncannily familiar.
Then, to me: “Your father says Paul’s number is…do you have a pen?”
A pen? Did I have a pen? Fuck the pen, because didn’t I just hear my father speak? It sure sounded like it. I hadn’t heard his voice in nearly twenty years because—
Because he’s dead, he hanged himself, you were at his funeral, this isn’t possible!
“Gaston?” my mother was saying. “Gaston? Oh, zut alors, I think I lost him.”
My father saying something in the background.
“Gaston?” my mother repeated. “Are you there? Gaston? This stupid computer—”
Fumbling for the mouse, I ended the call.
∆∆∆
I was on my feet, my head spinning, the world canting. I placed my hand on the desk for balance, but then I was shuffling backward, one step, two, three, accelerating—falling.
The back of my skull walloped something. Rocketing pain. Then I was on the floor, fighting to keep my eyes open, struggling to sit up.
Darkness.
Chapter 26
I wasn’t unconscious for long.
When I got unsteadily to my feet, and checked the clock on the computer monitor, it was 7:14 p.m.
My head throbbed where I’d struck it on the porcelain sink. It wasn’t bleeding, but I could feel a bump already rising on the back of my skull.
Yet this concern was ancillary.
My father was alive!
This should be impossible, of course…only it wasn’t. Impossibilities went out the window when I couldn’t find Taured on a map of the world.
A multitude of questions blazed through my mind all at once. Did my father never shoot that man in the Andorra timeline? Was he never charged with murder here? Or was he found innocent in court? Or guilty, but on a lesser charge than murder? Did he serve his time…?
“This is too much,” I mumbled to myself, even as a weird sort of euphoria blossomed inside me. Not because my father was alive—he meant little more to
me than a complete stranger—but because the fact he was alive meant…well, I didn’t really know. Something profound about life and death certainly. Perhaps life wasn’t fleeting, and death wasn’t absolute. Because if they were, how could a man be alive in one dimension and dead in another?
My head began to ache. These thoughts were much too big for me right then.
I decided I needed to do something. I’d been cooped up in the tiny room for hours. I counted what remained of the stolen money. Sixty thousand yen. It wasn’t going to last me long. And then what? I’d have to pickpocket someone else. And when that money ran out? Pickpocket another person. And another, and another, and another. At some point my luck would eventually run out. I’d get caught, maybe arrested, and then it wouldn’t be long before I was back in prison, only this time booked on a crime I couldn’t deny.
Old Man Toshio got two years for stealing a two-dollar sandwich.
How long would I get as an illegal immigrant pickpocketer?
I needed help. It was good to have spoken to my mother, and I felt immeasurably better knowing I wasn’t alone in this world. But my mother was too far away to help me. Same with my brothers.
I needed to talk to someone local. I immediately thought of Toru Matsuoka, the chef of the Michelin-star sushi restaurant. The woman I’d spoken to on the phone had said Matsuoka was in Osaka for a month. On business?
Sitting back down in front of the computer, I searched for the restaurant Matsuoka. As I’d suspected, there was indeed a branch in Osaka. Using the Facebook app, I dialed the corresponding telephone number. The line connected and was answered promptly.
“Hai. Ginzu Kojyu de gozaimasu,” a woman said.
“Gaston Green to mooshimasu ga,” I replied. “Matsuoka-san wa irasshaimasu ka?”
“I’m sorry,” she continued in Japanese. “He’s not available right now.”
“I have an event scheduled with him at his Tokyo restaurant. It is important I speak with him.”
“Hold on a second, please. What was your name again?”
“Gaston Green.”