Topics About Which I Know Nothing

by Patrick Ness

  Day #5, Thursday, in which Drew does a series of naughty things that would be unthinkable 12,000 miles away: The sun is so beautiful that Drew decides to really throw off the shackles and go to a nude beach. There is only a single official one left in Sydney (so Drew reads in a guidebook for such things), Lady Jane Beach by South Head. He takes a bus in the opposite direction from Circular Quay and manages to make himself feel historic by walking past the marker at the spot where Captain Phillips first set foot on Australian soil (it was actually the prisoner upon whose shoulders he was riding whose feet were first, but history is full of such glossedover truths, yes?). After a tentative stay at Camp Cove Beach, Drew sucks in his gut and walks the path to Lady Jane. It all turns out to be easy. He removes his clothing in pieces, conscientiously covering with sunblock as he goes, until he is down to his Speedos. With a shrug, off they come. The world continues to spin.

  ‘Excuse me, do you know what time it is?’ a smiling young man asks, naked as a starling.

  Drew draws his watch out of his bag, ‘Uh, it’s 12:15,’ he says.

  The young man’s eyebrows shuffle. ‘You’re not Australian.’

  ‘No. American. Don’t hate me.’

  ‘Oh, far from it, mate. Hope you got a strong sunblock on. We’re really not even supposed to be out in the sun between eleven and three, but no one listens.’

  He smiles again.

  The details of what follow are not terribly necessary. Suffice it to say, there are appropriate nooks in nearby rocks; the young man’s name is Marcus; he is a brunette; and Drew will never speak to him again. Drew leaves the beach a little sunburnt, a little shaky, and a few ounces lighter, smelling of exertion and suntan lotion. He is someone else down here, he thinks with a dazed smile, someone with dangers and edges.

  He is (he is ashamed to admit) bored by Don Giovanni that evening and, to be honest, left with a terrible vertigo from his seat in the precipitous Opera House balcony. Still, through most of the evening he smiles slyly, trying himself on for size.

  Drew was surprised at his calm. Really, he thought, I should be shaking, my stomach should have fallen, my mouth should be hanging open. Instead, he was furrowing his brow as if considering an inscrutable French film. Peter would be thirty-two now, five years older. Unless, of course, he had actually been literally dead and had only recently been resurrected in this faraway place. He certainly looked younger than thirty-two. Twenty-five maybe. Maybe the air down here was doing him good …

  Drew derailed this train of thought like Godzilla might. Who cares about the air? he thought. I’m worried about his age and how he looks and not about just how and why the hell he’s here? Is that weird?

  Peter had grown a goatee which suited him rather well. Maybe that was what made him look younger. He was wearing a black wool blazer and wire glasses. His hair folded back, lanky but not long. His posture was remarkably poised, like a lifelong piano player, relaxed but at the ready.

  My God, Drew thought, he looks just like …

  For those last few months, Australia was a mantra Drew used to get through a period that was both boring and trying. The last three years of college he had worked a full-time job and was going to classes full-time as well. It wasn’t as hard as people thought, but still, it was boring and trying. He worked for the Defense Department, of all things, in contracts. Like every other part of the government, it was run by religious folk and homosexuals; an odd, tense combination which somehow resulted in office parties where everyone smoked. Drew was Contract Modification Special Assistant which was even less interesting than it sounded: he filed contract modifications; he entered contract modifications into the computer; he xeroxed contract modifications; he faxed contract modifications; he proofread contract modifications. It paid the rent, it was close to school, and they didn’t mind that he took classes.

  College had taken five years, which was not so unusual. In Drew’s case, it was due less to indecision than to the full-time job and an insistence on not taking help from his parents. It was a purchased freedom and he knew it, but it did allow that conversation with the mater and pater without fear of financial recourse. This arrangement made college less of the social hullabaloo than Drew suspected it was supposed to be. He only managed any real fun by proxy, through his friend Karen who was making up for a dull childhood with a force unmatched in nature. She and her red, red hair forced Drew to tag along to unacceptable and sometimes dangerous parties, introduced him to several brief romances, and generally performed the friend function of life absorption and radiance.

  It hadn’t been Karen who had first thought of Australia, but she whipped the batter into an irresistible soufflé.

  ‘Think of it this way,’ she had said during that first period when Drew still doubted the possibility. ‘You’ll be as far away from yourself as you can possibly be and you’ll wake up and discover that, what do you know? You came along after all.’

  The obsession commenced. With the last semester of college paid for from his savings and scholarships, Drew misered the money month after month, dragging his social life even lower (‘I am not going to rent another movie,’ Karen always said, just before they did). School ended, the job did not, and life got even more tedious, but Drew still held out. He even forsook looking for a ‘career opportunity’ (Were there any for a B.A. in Hungarian Art History?) and just worked.

  Australia was the undressed courtesan waiting on the bed, the first wish on the monkey’s paw, the new nose at the end of the surgery. There was the possibility of disaster, but it was worth the risk. Australia got him through a particularly dry summer in which he met no new friends (certainly not any new men), went to one social event (a birthday gathering that could not even be called a party), and got a new boss, an ex-marine who wanted the office run ‘smooth as a military strike.’ Drew had absolutely no idea what that meant except maybe that it all ended in fiery death.

  Would he phrase it as a question? Would he preface it with a greeting? Or would he just say,

  ‘Peter,’ calmly, like that.

  Peter looked up from his paper. Was there surprise anywhere? Drew looked. Yes, there it was, in a small fold around his eyes. There, but only there.

  ‘Drew?’

  Peter folded his paper slowly and placed it on the table.

  ‘Drew.’

  Their eyes remained locked, but the tension was of a different variety than Drew expected. It wasn’t like the thief being caught; it wasn’t like a secret being uncovered. It was pure, simple expectation.

  ‘Well,’ said Peter.

  ‘Well, indeed,’ said Drew.

  II

  Peter had joined the military when Drew was ten. After a self-proclaimed ‘shiftless and disinterested’ year and a half in college, Peter had enlisted more for the change of scenery than anything else. The parents had been ambivalent at first: ‘The navy!? Don’t you want a career?’ ‘I can have a career in the navy.’ ‘But, the navy?!’ Soon enough, in an act that felt (to them) like generosity, they eventually gave their blessing. It wouldn’t have mattered if they hadn’t, he was already packed and waiting to go. He shipped off almost immediately for Guam: ‘Guam?! What’s in Guam?’ ‘Lots of Guamanians and a naval base.’ ‘But, Guam?!’ And thus Peter became the Beckers’ personal Link of Need in the church prayer chain.

  With no other siblings, Drew was put in an unsatisfactory position. He naturally missed the company and the shared family history, but nine years was too large an age difference for them to be truly close. Too much height difference to play catch, too much interest difference to want to bother, Peter was more like a high-intensity uncle than a brother. He was always there and always family but family at a remove. Drew missed Peter when he left, but it was like missing a hole.

  Life hobbled on and, contrary to widely held expectations, Peter stayed in the navy past his initial three years, signing up for another five. What’s more, he actually prospered and moved up the ranks at a fair clip, even joining NCO training and
winding up as a first lieutenant. He visited home once every year or two with gifts and gab. It was an arrangement that was completely accepted, hardly warranting comment.

  Then, at the tail end of his initial eight-year term, when Peter was serving tour in the Persian Gulf, their mother opened the front door to two men in navy uniforms. They were holding their hats. Drew’s mother covered her mouth and chin with her left hand. It was two days before Drew was to leave for college. He waited an additional three days for the funeral, missing a few orientation meetings, but nothing that caused too great of an inconvenience.

  They said Peter had been killed accidentally by a grenade in training exercises. They were vague but insinuating. It was never supposed to happen. He should never have had a live grenade, and he definitely should never have been so reckless with it. This is not exactly what the two men in uniform said, but it was the impression they left. A day later, a casket arrived at the airport. It was locked because Peter’s face, shoulder and arm had been blown off.

  ‘You don’t want to see him, ma’am,’ the first officer had said. ‘Trust me.’

  Naturally, the funeral was somber but also strange in that most of the attendees hadn’t known Peter well or at all and were only present for the family. Having no personal point of reference, no one knew what to say and winced silent apologies at the family. Drew suffered through a preacher dispensing the usual ‘he-was-a-wonderful-man-with-such-potential’ even though he’d never actually met Peter. It didn’t matter. Drew was barely there. He bounced his knees up and down, he tapped his fingers on his palms, he hummed. He was longing to get away, away from the relentless perfumed religion of his parents’ home, to some sort of freedom, any sort as long as it was one. Oh, that feeling …

  He left the instant it was no longer improper to do

  ‘You’re the only one I’ve got left,’ his mother cried at his departure. ‘I’ll leave you in the hands of God.’ Not much flair but a dedicated energy, you had to hand her that. ‘Be good.’

  She had quoted herself verbatim on the last phone call before Drew left for Australia, but there it had carried a double meaning: Don’t die, and don’t do any of those, you know, things. Too late.

  And so again, here he was. And here he was.

  ‘Um,’ Peter said, ‘have a seat.’ Scooting back, halfstanding, motioning a hand.

  Drew sat. Peter seemed to think he was angry.

  ‘I’m not angry,’ Drew said, his speech quickening as he went along, ‘if that’s what you’re wondering. Surprised, yes, a little, well, a lot, but not as much as I would have imagined if I had in fact ever imagined this moment which of course I hadn’t since this moment was unimaginable since you are in fact dead.’

  He paused.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I guess I am getting angry, because suddenly I’m feeling like a dupe, and the feeling only seems to be amplifying.’

  ‘Please,’ Peter said, ‘you really and truly do have a right to be angry, although I would have expected you to be surprised a while longer, since I, unlike you, have had ample opportunity to imagine this moment. But I would be a fool to ask you to feel otherwise. You must, of course, hear me out.’

  Drew thought, I’m reeling. This is what people mean when they say they were sent reeling. I’ve been catapulted over the castle wall. Damn.

  ‘Hold up a minute,’ he said and looked at the table. He took a deep breath. He focused on a wayward meadow of sugar granules on the table. Peter respected the silence and said nothing, only took a drink from his coffee.

  ‘How are you so calm?’ Drew asked. ‘Aren’t you agitated or nervous or surprised or something? Anything?’

  Peter shrugged. ‘Again, I’ve had opportunity to envision this moment. The placement of the moment is surprising, yes, but the moment itself is not. Not really.’

  Another pause. Peter seemed to be waiting for Drew to take the lead. Probably to see which of the imagined scenarios he would have to play. Making the mountain come to him. Now, why did that feel typical?

  ‘Oddly enough,’ Drew said, ‘I really do want to know why, but it seems that I am so much more interested in knowing how you did it. I mean, people don’t just fake a death just like that. They just don’t. Did the military have a hand in this? Did they make you top secret or something?’

  ‘Oh, God, no,’ Peter said. ‘I was out of the navy long before I …’ He pursed his lips in thought for a second, ‘checked out, so to speak.’

  Drew protested, ‘But there were letters and two men in uniforms came to the door. There was a casket and a death certificate. What the hell?’

  ‘Just because someone wears a uniform doesn’t mean they’re in the navy.’

  ‘… ‘

  ‘I didn’t say it was cheap.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Or legal, to be frank. Really, the less you know about the details, the better it is for me.’

  ‘But how did you know Mom and Dad wouldn’t pursue it? If you weren’t actually in the navy, it would have been so easy for them to find out that, maybe not that you weren’t dead, but that something strange was up.’

  ‘How long was Dad in the navy?’

  A rhetorical question. Drew thought, He’s rehearsed this.

  ‘Thirty years, thirty days.’

  ‘And you know how rah-rah God and Country and all that crap that Mom and Dad are, yes?’

  ‘Well, yeah, but …’

  ‘I was counting on the fact that if it looked official enough, they would accept it as fact, no questions asked. Judging by our conversation so far, this whole thing seems like rather astounding coincidence rather than planned attack, so it seems I was right. People believe what they want to believe.’

  ‘They wouldn’t want to believe you were dead.’

  ‘But they also wouldn’t want to believe something as omnipresent as the government would lie to them. You know how they think. You know how they vote.’

  Drew had to admit this was true. His parents had been grief-stricken, but not exactly angry. Thinking back, their acceptance was almost shockingly tacit. But wait.

  ‘But wait.’

  ‘Drew,’ Peter said, sounding for all the world like the big brother, ‘it’s really not as difficult as you might think. It’s certainly not easy, but neither is it impossible.’

  For the first time, Drew noticed the slight antipodal tinge in Peter’s speech, noithah is it impossible. Peter had been here a while. Drew sat, attempting to order this somehow. No go, it was just too big, too sudden.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Ah, why,’ Peter leaned back in his chair, looking at the ceiling. ‘In all the times that I’ve pictured being found or discovered, I’ve gone over and over again how I would explain why. And I’ve decided,’ he glanced at Drew, ‘you’re not going to like this, I’ve decided not to give an explanation.’

  ‘What?! Don’t you think I deserve one?’ Drew rose slightly from his chair.

  ‘Of course you do,’ Peter said and, surprisingly, looked genuinely sorry, ‘but I honestly can’t give one. I can tell you there was no foul play. I’m not in any legal trouble. There’s no cloak and dagger to any of it. But any true explanation would only come off as unsatisfying for both of us. You’d think I was having you on. I can only say to you, imagine if you had the opportunity to completely reinvent yourself. If you didn’t like who you were and there was a chance at hand to completely become someone new, would you consider the opportunity? If someone said, wanna go?, would you?’

  Drew, having had some experience in that matter and also having had experience on, he felt, a more healthy path by becoming happy with who he was rather than unhappy with who he was not blah blah blah, said, without much hesitation at all, ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s you. I can only answer for me.’

  ‘You don’t even seem willing to do that.’

  Peter again looked sorry. ‘What can I say to you to make you not upset? Nothing. A better question is, what happens now?’
>
  And there, at the table, was a clear glass dome of silence.

  III

  Sydney is a city of jaywalkers. Drew was constantly left alone at crossings waiting for the walk signal. Perhaps as a reaction, each signal emitted an emphatically loud series of chirps and beeps when it was time to walk, as if to say, Where the hell are you all going? Here, he stood alone as men, women, children, an old lady with a walker, all crossed the street against the light. Drew stared at the opposite curb and took no notice. He had left the cafe five minutes ago. The five-and-a-half blissful days of the vacation so far were temporarily obliterated. Drew was trying to convince himself that what had happened, had happened. He was failing.

  What was that all about?

  Both brothers had become unable to really say anything further than nothing. They agreed to meet later. Drew gave Peter his hotel name, room and phone number. Peter gave Drew his home phone. Drew had not been without suspicion.

  ‘How do I know this is real?’ he had asked. ‘How do I know you’re not going to skip out on me? I shouldn’t let you out of my sight, if you want to know my honest opinion.’

  ‘No,’ Peter said, ‘I understand, but I might as well face this now. It’s as good a time as any to face the music, pay the piper, et cetera.’ He had even said, et cetera.

  ‘All right,’ said Drew, warily.

  ‘But there’s a price,’ Peter said.

  ‘What price?’

  ‘I only agree to meet you again on the condition you keep this information to yourself. I am not willing to make a re-emergence into my past life. And I don’t mean not yet. I mean not at all. If you tell Mom and Dad, there’s no way I’m going to give you anything more, and I’ll just disappear again. You know I can do it.’