by Beth Dranoff
“We all are.” As I took the leap of hypothetical belief. “Dad. What are you doing here? And why do you look like Ezra?”
He shrugged, his outline flickering as my father/Ezra faded and the grained surface of my vinyl passenger seat became more defined without its opaque overlay.
“My old friend comes to visit me sometimes,” my father said. “We’ve shared many things. Years. Sometimes Ezra is with me and sometimes I’m with him.”
I stared. My father, who was either dead or he wasn’t, kept using words in a sequence that made no sense to me. Was he dead? If so, was this his ghost? Did I believe in ghosts?
But if he was a ghost, why did he also look like Ezra? Was Ezra also a ghost, or was I reading the situation from left to right when I should really be going right to left?
Fuck it.
“You’re not making sense,” I said.
“You found the maps?” Because when faced with a reality challenged, why not change the subject altogether. “I felt it, you know. The lines and the patterns joining together. Showing. Telling. The path from you to me and back again.”
This didn’t feel like the sharp-minded, senior-level science specialist I’d remembered my father to be. The logic over emotion birth partner to Mum I’d seen in that spirit-walk flashback Anshell and I had gone on a few months back. Dad reminded me more of the Ezra I’d seen in his native university office environment. Befuddled. A stereotype of the absent-minded professor.
Except my father wasn’t a professor, and he also wasn’t Ezra no matter how much he currently looked like him. Right?
Maybe I could play along while I figured this one out.
“Why are you here?” Motivation prioritized over identity. I could do this.
My father didn’t answer, although he did twist in his seat to watch me.
Great. We were going with attempted mind reading over oh, say, anything in the helpful-answer category.
“The Agency finds you interesting,” he said finally. Hello random observationalist. “I used to work for them. Did you used to work for them as well?”
“Yeah.”
“It was real then. Not imagined,” he said. This was feeling more and more like a conversation with Celandra.
“No,” I replied. “I used to work for them. With Ezra. He trained me.” Watching the face he presented for any flicker of emotion, recognition. Instead I saw frustration purse his lips and tighten the creases around his eyes. As though there was something there, he could feel it, if he could just focus hard enough.
I thought maybe he was going to soil his pants from the effort. Then I wondered whether ghosts still did that. Which brought me back around to one of the many as-yet-unanswered questions: was my father, if indeed it was him sitting here beside me, a ghost?
“The Agency has made you another job offer,” he said. “A new one. A now one. Are you going to take it?”
“How did you...?” No point in asking questions he wasn’t willing, or maybe equipped, to answer. “Where are you that you’re able to keep track of my job offers?”
“I’m here,” my father said. “Also there. Where you are and where I am, but only sometimes at the same time. Keeping track of the whens and hows, the intersections, it confuses me sometimes. Those times I forget. What is real and which is that thing I shouldn’t confuse with reality. But also the questions you’re asking aren’t quite the right ones. You need to ask to understand. You can’t see. Although you do see through me. Because of where I am, where I’ve been, and where you need to be.”
“Where do I need to be?”
My father blinked a few times. I couldn’t tell if he was surprised or perplexed by the question.
“Here,” he said, as though the answer was obvious. “Where else would you be?”
“With you?”
“Oh no,” he said, blinking at the rate of a computer screen refresh. My eyeballs hurt watching him; I was still too young for eyestrain, right? “Nononononono.” His voice rising in both pitch and volume. “You can’t be here because then why am I here? It does not make sense. Can’t happen. Won’t happen. Right?” Expectant, but of what I wasn’t sure.
At least he hadn’t started singing. Or dancing naked in the moonlight, like Celandra. Things that couldn’t be unseen that I’d prefer not to see in the first place.
“Dad, are you dead?”
“No,” he said. Confident in that answer at least. “I’m very much alive. Why do you ask?”
“Well,” I said. “The Agency told us you’d died. We had a funeral. Sat shivah.”
“Oh,” he said. I couldn’t tell whether he was surprised or whether he was beyond all that. “Was it a good turnout?” There, that dry sense of humor I remembered.
I nodded.
“Dad, what happened to you? This is all kinds of crazy.” I skipped the part where that adjective fit him as much or more than the current situation.
“I’m not entirely sure,” he said. “I’ve been trying to retrace my steps, deconstruct the outcome from all possible triggers. Ezra and I were working on something. Testing. And then something happened, a big boom, but for me it’s also a big blank. I can’t see how it happened, or exactly what. But the outcome put me here and you and your mother and everyone else I knew there. Or here. It’s all very confusing sometimes.”
“I get that.” Because it was obvious.
“Danyankeleh,” my father said, turning in his seat to look at me. “Will you be taking that job at the Agency?”
I shrugged.
“You can’t trust anyone there, you know. Your friends are probably not the friends you think they are.”
“Understatement,” I muttered.
“But,” he continued. “You’ll be able to help me if you’re part of the Agency. Track down the information I need to figure out how to get free again.”
Of course. This was the man who’d tattooed baby me for his own still-to-be-determined purposes, lied to my mother about it, and put a magical bull’s-eye on my back as a result. The father who’d put his needs above the safety or interests of his family—you know, those people he was supposed to love and protect.
No wonder he wanted me working for the Agency again. Why was I even surprised?
I shook my head rather than share my thoughts out loud on the irresponsibility and self-absorption of this particular parent of mine. Had he always been this way? I’d never noticed before; maybe I’d been too young. Then again, time could have shaped his psyche along new neural pathways. It had been sixteen years. He’d been who knows where doing who knows what. For all I knew he was dying each night to be reborn the next day. OK, I didn’t really think that, but anything was a possibility until the actual truth was somehow revealed.
I wanted to put my faith in the man who looked and sounded like my father. Hug him and get his approval, praise for the things I’d done and the person I’d turned into. But this was also a man who’d betrayed me before he even really knew me, using me as a tool to effect his own ends. His and Ezra’s. They’d both allowed my mother and me to believe Stuart Markovitz was dead. And now he was back, although not really, and I didn’t know whether my father had ended up where he was now by accident or design.
And you wonder why self-reliance is my faith. At least if I disappoint myself, I’ll have only me to blame.
I flashed, uncomfortable now, to how things had been with Owain. How his not being there left me twitchy and wanting more. A familiar feeling. I expected him to vanish the way my father had.
But I didn’t say any of that. I might care, but it wasn’t something I was about to share.
Instead: “There might be another way.”
My father’s eyes narrowed within Ezra’s face. Irritated? The way his eyebrows scrunched around the furrowed trio of lines etched above the bri
dge of his nose reminded me of my former mentor’s piercing intelligence. That focus as he reassessed all the possible factors he could nudge around the playing board. For Ezra, there was always the game. Had it been the same for my father?
Was it still?
“Who are your allies, little girl?”
My blood chilled; this voice was not my father. I blinked and saw Ezra. Blinked once more and she was beside me. The last someone I wanted to share space with—ever.
And why was she here, now, when moments before I was looking at Ezra and talking to my father? How were those three connected?
I didn’t say her name. The utterance could make things worse, and I wasn’t in a gambling mood. Instead I leaned over and turned on the radio; I needed to do something with my fingers that wasn’t me tapping out my nervousness to the beat of my rattling breath of fear. Death metal blared through the crackling speakers and I jumped. Forgot that the U of T station went particularly experimental when they figured nobody was listening. Or, you know, too drunk/baked to care.
Whoever was sitting next to me now was not appreciating the staccato beats and guitar string slides punctuated by a falsetto peak that could have been a note-based ice pick stabbing directly into my eardrums.
“Turn that down.” Ezra, exasperated. Interesting. Exactly how many consciousnesses were there occupying the same space at the same time? I wished I’d paid closer attention in physics class. There was a formula, somewhere, where all this made sense. Right?
And what did the music have to do with it all? Had I just accidentally discovered a way to switch the skin-suit channel?
“Maybe,” I replied. Fake it till the crazy goes away. “Who am I going to see in your spot if I do?”
Ezra chuckled as pride played hide and seek with his smile.
“Good girl,” he said.
“Ezra,” I said. “Please. Where did my father go? And her?”
At my vague reference to Alina, Ezra shook his head and looked over his shoulder. Nothing there; his shoulders lowered, unclenching inch by move-it-faster-already inch. Interesting.
“It’s me right now,” Ezra said. “Stuart comes to visit sometimes too.”
“You’re tripping me the hell out, Ezra,” I said. Mentally cataloguing the location of my nearest weapon. “You show up, you vanish, and in between you’re speaking in riddles or tongues, and maybe you’re torturing me or maybe you’re saving me. Calling you inconsistent is an understatement. What do you want? Seriously? And what the—my father? Skins? What the hell is going on?”
Ezra started laughing. Apparently my outburst was his version of good stand-up. Tears rolling down his face, droplets dangling in the ridges and shadows of his cheeks before he brushed them away with the back of his spider-web-patterned hand. On the inside of his right-side wrist, to the left of the streaked blue veins, was a thumbprint-shaped tattoo. Inked in grey and smudge, lines and sworls contrasting against his pale skin; a police blotter imprint of something someone wanted to remember. I tried to see whether his thumbprint matched the markings. They were different, I thought, but I couldn’t be certain from this angle.
Let’s assume dissimilitude. So then why? What was the significance?
I reached out, the tongue of a snake tasting its prey; not quite as fast as I now could, but not so slow that Ezra had a chance to stop me either. Touched the symbol with my index finger and felt a jolt. My heels ached. Instinct: I tried again. This time my thumb lined up with the print on Ezra’s wrist. My entire body contracted beneath my skin.
Forced my focus through that pinprick of light Anshell had taught me, clinging to my humanity even as the cat clawed its way through my throat and I swallowed back the yowl that would end all questions while shredding any last bits of my peace. My thumb was on fire, but the flames were invisible even as the pain was anything but.
I held on.
Ezra’s face contorted, curving in on itself.
“What have you done?” His voice becoming distant. I expected him to disappear, even as I held his wrist, but instead he solidified once more, Ezra as Ezra; only the changed expression giving a clue that anything was in flux.
And then he was my father again.
“Good,” Stuart said with Ezra’s mouth. “You can let go now,” he added.
I glanced down as I loosened my grip. The thumbprint was still there.
So. Much. Weirdness.
“We don’t have much time,” he said. “I think. It’s hard to know for sure, but it felt as though I could be here for longer this visit. So ask me. I’ll give you what I can.”
Deep breath. Let’s do that thing that makes no sense. Carpe diem, fish of the day and all that.
With my luck, I’d be shifting into that next anyway.
“Where are you when you’re not physically here?”
“Wrong question,” he said. “The more pertinent inquiry: how can someone be in two places at once?”
I waited for him to respond. If my father wanted to be asking the questions, he could damned well share some answers too. But he was still playing paternalistic teacher, a trait I’d never realized before how much he shared with Ezra.
But I was far from that little girl in a pink frilly dress, knee socks and white patent leather shoes who always did what she was told. If I’d even been that before.
“Stop,” I said. “We don’t have time for games. Again: where are you—right now?”
“I’m sitting next to you,” he replied, brushing off my irritation and tone as inconsequential.
“And?”
“I’m also in an alternate dimension,” he said with an exhale that lasted many more consecutive seconds than the average breath should take. Maybe I should have kept track, but I lost the count after ten.
“So you’re here but you’re also there.” I calculated the possible if/then scenarios in my head. “How did you get there, the place that isn’t here?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Last thing I remember was being in the lab with Ezra. Then nothing. Then not here.”
“Why are you here now? Not before?”
“I tried, Danyankeleh. So hard. So many times.” He brushed a tear from his cheek, impatient to dismiss the show.
“What changed?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea,” my father said. Then: “Ezra. I think Ezra found a way to make the barrier more permeable.”
I nodded. I had an idea how he’d pulled that one off. One word: Alina. “Tell me about Alina, Dad.”
Sudden stillness where before the energy had twitched. His index finger touching his lips together as they shaped ssh.
“We do not speak her name,” he said. “Especially so close to the inter-dimensional divide. Especially you must take care.”
“Why, Dad? Why me?”
“Because you hold the key to unlocking the dimensions for good. In your veins. On your back.”
“Does she know? Has anyone told her?”
“I did,” my father said. Right before he vanished, still wearing Ezra’s face.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I was knocking and knocking; I couldn’t stop. Even when my knuckles started to ache. Even when my skin tore and blood trickled across the back of my hand and down into the cracks of my skin. Even though I knew what and who I smelled like. Even so. Forgetting I knew where they kept the spare key. Rousing whoever I could on the other side of that door to let me in.
It opened and Sam was there. Shirtless. His neck and cheeks flushed red through his overnight stubble as his eyes widened and his shoulders went tight. Taking in the wild mess that was me in front of him. I couldn’t tell if he was worried or annoyed I was here; either way, when he stepped back from the doorway, I followed him inside. Clicked the dead bolt behind me. Can’t be too careful these days.
/> “Anshell?”
“Out,” he said.
“Back soon?”
“Maybe.” Mr. Non-Committal all of a sudden.
“I need to talk to him.” As if that would help move things along.
“Got that. He’s still not here.”
“Can I wait?” This monosyllabic Sam wasn’t my favorite version. Although maybe that was the point.
“Suit yourself,” Sam said with a shrug.
Mr. I-Can’t-Be-Bothered-To-Care headed upstairs, ostensibly to his room and back to bed. I hesitated a few beats before following him up, my palm flat on the door—just in time to keep it from being shut in my face.
Sam didn’t fight me; instead he turned to flop back onto the bed, his head propped by pillows still indented from where he’d left them minutes before. I tried not to think of the times with me, there with him.
Instead I shut the door behind me. Old habits. But instead of joining him where he lay, I sank into the nearby yellow flower-dotted armchair. Only one t-shirt was draped across the back. Must be laundry day.
“This feels weird,” I said, watching him breathe.
“You reek,” he said by way of reply. “Jon?” My turn to shrug. His nostrils flared and his eyes turned questioning. “There was an old man? Men?” I shook my head. “What have you gotten yourself into this time?”
Sam had no right to judge—he was this close to dumping me. He could keep his judgments to himself.
“Do I owe you an explanation? Thought you didn’t care anymore.”
Sam narrowed his eyes. “Never said I didn’t care.”
“This, what we’re doing right here—”
“What, communicating?”
Sure. Communicating. That’s what it was.
I tried again.
“All of this.” I did a vague etcetera etcetera wave to encompass our current state of fun. “This wasn’t our deal. It’s not like I ask you who you sleep with when I’m not around.”