No Way Home

by Tyler Wetherall

  Evan was left in charge; he was confident flying alone after summers spent visiting his papa in California. He knew exactly in what order we were meant to do things.

  Once we reached check-in, the black flapping frenzy began, a feeling I was coming to recognize. I eyed men in suits gathered together, ominous as crows, thinking any one of them could be Bastard Scotland Yard, and how would we know?

  Dad was concerned that our names might be flagged in the system, so he made a purposeful mistake when booking our flights, leaving off the first or last letter of our surnames—Tylerw Etherall or Caitlin Gaser—as if it were a clerical error. We watched nervously while the airline steward scanned the screen, brow crinkling at the error, and we rehearsed our lines. Rather than update the computer record, the steward corrected the mistake manually, so our names never entered the system (something that wouldn’t be possible these days).

  At the scanners, my rucksack was cordoned off. We were called over to watch a man remove all the items from my bag one by one. My diary. A lumberjack shirt. This couldn’t be ordinary. My pencil case. It must be because they know, I thought. The security man rifled inside the pencil case and pulled out my scissors, looking up at us with a triumphant smile. He rescanned my bag and we were sent on our way. My heart was beating so hard, I could feel it in the tips of my ears, and my heart went on to beat in exactly the same way every single time I have walked through security ever since. Evan audibly huffed in disbelief, and I felt guilty. We wanted to be invisible and my scissors had ruined it.

  Sitting on the plane, Caitlin and I mimicked the air stewardesses with exaggerated arm signals like synchronized swimmers. “In the event of an emergency, please adopt the brace position.” We giggled into our laps, our arms folded over our heads.

  For the ski season, Dad and Lana had moved to Megève, a chic alpine resort town nestled amid the ice cream–capped mountains. Other people had come here to hide too: resistance fighters during World War II and famous faces like Brigitte Bardot and Jean Cocteau, searching for respite in the shadow of Mont Blanc.

  Dad wouldn’t meet us at the airport in case we had been followed, so Lana came instead. Dad had taught her to drive back in London. He’d also taught her how to swim when they lived in Paris, and now he was teaching her to ski. She was only five years older than Evan, occupying an uncomfortable place between child and adult.

  We set off, Lana taking the same sickening, circuitous routes as Mom had on the other side.

  Once we arrived at the chalet, I felt safe, as if the danger was measured in the distance between Dad and me, when in fact the opposite was true.

  One afternoon when the snow started falling heavily, clouding our visibility, I latched on to the wrong family, following them all the way down the slope. When we removed our masks and hats, I realized they were strangers. They stood in a circle looking down at me expectantly, until I shuffled off, apologizing. I had skied down to a different base completely, so I slung my skis over my shoulders, undid the buckles on my boots, and set off, walking clunkily along the road in what I hoped was the right direction. I found myself back on the snow, pulling myself along with my poles through tall fir trees, feeling a little afraid. I emerged at another base, bustling with skiers ending their day, and there was Dad, searching for me among other roughly waist-high girls in ski suits. That night, while we feasted on grilled raclette cheese like the Swiss, I regaled my siblings with the story of my brave journey through the woods, hiking through high powder snow, where there were probably bears who ate people’s faces. I wanted Cait and Ev to feel guilty for abandoning me, but they just rolled their eyes and the next day left me at the top of a black icy mogul run. I stuck with Dad and Lana instead, as he tutored her down the baby blues and wide reds, telling me to wait up.

  * * *

  After Megève, they moved to a house in the South of France with tall, eggshell-blue shutters, an orchard, and a swimming pool. Fugitive life didn’t seem so bad.

  We rode on the back of Dad’s blue Harley-Davidson, the weight of the too-big helmet on my shoulders and the hot air blasting around my body. It was all thrilling until we took a tumble, bodies flying in different directions. I hit the ground first, the bike landed on top of me, and then Dad came down with a thud. I escaped with no more than scrapes and bruises, but I refused to get on the Harley again.

  When Evan couldn’t come with us we were accompanied by one of Dad’s friends. Dad was never afraid to ask for favors, and he was always embarrassing us by calling on a friend to see if we could stay with them or use their pool or borrow their bikes or anything else that we might desire. Dad said part of being Jewish is belonging to a community that extends around the world, and when there is a problem that someone can help with, you can ask, and vice versa. But Mom had taught us never to ask for favors. She was raised in a school where you weren’t allowed to ask for the saltshaker at mealtimes. You could look at the saltshaker, stare at it longingly, until the other people at the table anticipated your need for the saltshaker and passed it to you, but if no one offered, you had to make do without salt. We were stuck somewhere in the middle, a reluctant acceptance of the kindness of others followed by a guilt-ridden gratitude.

  Eventually we flew alone, Cait now thirteen and taking the lead. She refused to fly with the other unaccompanied children, each with a nametag and an if-lost-please-return badge like on our luggage.

  There were other fugitives in France too, and each one had their own story. One family had two sons who were aspiring tennis players, and they sent them back to America with fake identities so that they could attend Bollettieri Tennis Camp in Florida. Why let a little thing like being on the run hold your kids back from fulfilling their clay court dreams? The network of fugitives stretched across the whole of Europe; fellow fugitives exchanged information with each other and tips on how to get by. I was beginning to see that Dad’s lifestyle had always been this way, for as long as I’d been a remembering person; I just hadn’t thought to question why. With each story he shared, we would probe around his own, but we never asked directly, and he never told.

  We hung out with the other fugitive kids. A young family who ran a fashion boutique in Paris had two daughters close to our ages. We didn’t know kids like us back home, on-the-run children who grew up collecting postal addresses and surnames the way other kids collect china dolls or baseball cards. We had first met them back in California when we were babies, and their dad got in trouble alongside ours, not that we talked about it. Fugitive kids don’t talk about being fugitives. Unlike fugitive parents, we don’t know what we can and cannot share, so we don’t say anything at all. We all grew up with one rule: don’t tell!

  We were there when another set of fugitive siblings were first told about their parents’ secret lives: that their name was not their own and they were in hiding from the FBI. I think their parents were worried they might hear it from us, which would never have happened. We hadn’t told a soul. Dad asked Cait and me to help them work through the shock afterward, which seemed unfair—no one had been there to help us, least of all Dad. These two kids were maybe seven and nine, and they didn’t have the emotional tools to understand what this meant. We watched them go through the same thought process we had: the realization your father is not the person you thought he was, which means neither are you. But the more they talked about it, the less comfortable Cait and I became. “It’s best not to talk about it,” Cait said eventually.

  And we didn’t talk about it with those two kids again until years later, when we found ourselves gathered around a table at a bar back in France, adults now, and for the first time we let ourselves share the stories that few people had heard. We spoke about when our names had changed and the excuses we were given or later gave: taxes or marriage or other such lies. We talked about our unquestioning acceptance of what we were told by our parents, glaring in hindsight. We bandied about these tales like private jokes, laughing at the absurdity of it all, but we still looked over our should
ers as we spoke. One thing fugitive kids share is a sense of caution in telling. Long after it can’t hurt anyone, it still feels like a transgression.

  * * *

  Later still, Dad and Lana moved to Annecy. They took a villa by the lake. Dad was training for his paragliding license, and we watched as he ran off the edge of one of the mountains surrounding the lake, swooping terrifyingly low for a moment, before catching a thermal and rushing upward, where he would turn in circles in the sunshine like Icarus. I was too young to fly, but Caitlin did, landing with her eyes wide and rushing from the thrill. She was always brave.

  We took a catamaran out on the lake, and Dad taught us to do back dives off the side, judging each jump with marks out of ten, his voice calling out through the water in my ears.

  Life was easy here. Our feet were always bare and no one expected anything of us except to be happy and play. The days were sticky sweet and long; they ended with us gathered together on the patio of a restaurant, eyes heavy in the golden candlelight with the faint smell of cigarettes in the air and the taste of mussels and garlic in my mouth. I’d fall asleep, my head resting on Dad’s lap, listening to the sound of adults talking around me.

  Still, I knew that Dad had a choice to make: to turn himself in and return to America or to keep running. He didn’t talk about it, always maintaining the same carefree demeanor as if we were all on one long holiday, like we had chosen for life to be this way and everything was going to be okay. This felt like precious time, and we didn’t want to ask him all of our questions because we didn’t want to spoil it. We saw that he was invested in maintaining this illusion, this lovely French daydream.

  But I worried, all the same, and I could feel that worry growing between my fingers—the eczema, which had plagued the creases of my body when I was little, returning after many years. Eventually it spread like a stain until my fingers and wrists were blistered and red raw. Mom took me to the doctor and tried every remedy from steroid cream to cod liver oil, which made my hands smell fishy and the girls at school teased me. In the end it was the homeopathist who helped, and probably because he sat me down and asked how I was feeling.

  I remember Caitlin and I used to run off on the beach on purpose and then sneak up on Dad, leaping on his shoulders and taunting him for having lost us. Barely flinching or opening his eyes from where he basked in the sunshine, Dad would say nonchalantly, “I knew exactly where you were; I always know where you are.” But that was just it—he didn’t. And looking at my fingers, I knew he was wrong about France too. Everything was not going to be okay.

  8

  It’s 1994 and my last year of junior school. Year Six. They’ve redesigned the uniform and the other girls turn up kitted out in the new tricolor blue, purple, and white striped dresses, a starched, stiff cotton that kept the collars upright, while I stay in the old uniform, softened with time and wear. If the teachers give me any trouble, Mom says to tell them she’ll buy a new uniform as soon as they make it affordable. I don’t care. As I grow taller, my skirt’s the shortest in the class, which gives me much-needed points in the social hierarchy, going a small way to compensate for the fact I can’t have a pair of Kickers like the cool girls. Best of all there’s nothing the teachers can do about it. They tell me to unroll my skirt, and I lift my sweater to show them it hasn’t been hitched one bit, taking great pleasure in their indignation.

  I got in trouble at some point for kicking another girl in the shins because she called me a slut. Mom stood up for me when the teachers complained. “I would have kicked her in the shins too,” she said on the drive home from school. When I looked sullen, she added: “You drive yourself crazy, chicken. School may seem like your whole world right now, but it’s a teeny tiny portion of it”—she pinched the air with her fingers in demonstration—“and the rest of life is much more fun—trust me. Nothing’s as bad as you think it is, you know?” she added emphatically. I had a tendency to wallow and she had little time for wallowing.

  Caitlin and I continued to march out to phone booths to speak to Dad; it felt completely normal now. He kept moving around with Lana in tow, us visiting on school holidays when we could. I was resentful that he bought Lana new skis for Christmas that year, when I knew money was tight. I could tell by the way the repairs had ground to a halt on the house and Mom budgeted our meals at one pound a day. She might have done this anyway, because she functioned on the premise that worse times were always around the corner, and it was best to be prepared. Dad swears he never missed a child support payment, but the longer he was on the run, the more I sensed Mom battening down the family hatches. Shortly before Christmas, knowing Mom was stressed about how to finance a tree and a feast and our festive expectations, Caitlin and I pooled our pocket money from our piggy banks and offered it to her, which must have been heartbreaking.

  I was sure if it wasn’t for Lana-Banana, as we’d dubbed her, amusing Dad as he swanned around Europe like some sort of international playboy, then he would resolve this faster and come home. It hadn’t dawned on me yet that he was never coming home.

  * * *

  That spring, Dad was confident enough in his new identity to fly back to London for some business. We saw him waiting for us at Heathrow, his baseball cap pulled low over his lip-biting worry-face.

  We flew back to Geneva together—the first time we had traveled alone with Dad for many years. At the Geneva airport, we crossed from the Swiss side to the French, a crossing Dad had handled many times without issue, but he was still on edge, which put me on edge too. At border control, an official extended his hand for our documents silently, and I waited for the cursory glance and stamp. But it didn’t happen. He was examining them closely. I looked up at Dad, whose expression hadn’t changed, but his eyes were wide and alert, his sunglasses dangling from his mouth, chewing on one arm as he was in the habit of doing. The official lifted his eyes to us again, and Dad removed the glasses from his mouth expectantly, but the documents were not returned.

  The official asked Dad to explain his relationship to Cait and me. Dad said he was our father and that he had separated from our mother, but that didn’t seem to satisfy the official. His questions continued while his eyes scanned a computer screen, turned away from our view, until in a decisive action he stepped out from the booth and ushered us away from the line that had formed behind us into a different part of the airport guarded by serious-looking men. We were escorted into a gray, sterile box-room, one of a long line of similar box-rooms.

  “Dad?” I asked, trotting along behind him.

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  Caitlin and I were offered the plastic chairs against the wall at the back, and a different man appeared to question Dad. He wanted to know where we were going; why we were going there; where our mother was; and why we all had different surnames. Dad gave his prepared responses, and started to get exasperated, acting like a man might act who was innocent, something Dad was practiced at. Occasionally this new official glanced over at Cait and me, as if terrible things had been done to us, things we probably didn’t understand.

  “Listen, what do you need from me so we can get out of here?” Dad asked.

  “We will need to speak to the children’s mother, just to make sure that you are who you say you are. You understand, we have to be very careful: a single man traveling with two young girls, who, by all indications, are not his own children.”

  Dad raised his eyebrows in disbelief and then turned away, indignant, expelling air through his teeth in frustration. He said our mother was unavailable: She was on holiday herself and he didn’t know how to reach her. “Ask me anything about these girls, and I can tell you. Or ask them! I mean, look at her, look at her face,” he was saying, indicating Caitlin’s perfect freckles, each dot distinct, unlike Dad’s, whose freckles had grown thick and textured over time. “She’s clearly my daughter.”

  Caitlin smiled meekly.

  Dad kept protesting, but the more he protested, the more convinced of his gui
lt the officer became.

  “You can use the phone in the hallway.”

  Dad disappeared and we were left on the plastic chairs in the sterile room. He needed to produce a mother for us, and it couldn’t be Mom, because her phone might still be tapped and she would be livid. Any sign of trouble and she was ready to cancel all future trips.

  The official came over, pulling up a chair so he could sit, leaning his elbows on his knees to meet us roughly at eye level. He asked us some questions. Easy questions. Who was the eldest; did we have more siblings; what was our mother called; and where did we live. And then he asked, “And that man? Who is that man?”

  “He’s our dad,” we said almost in unison, and it couldn’t have been clearer that we were sisters. Our voices are almost identical in their faded American lilt, so similar that years later, when we were both teenagers, we dumped each other’s boyfriends over the telephone so the other one didn’t have to go through the ordeal, and they never knew.

  The official nodded.

  I wondered if we had done badly or well.

  We were there for what felt like a long time. There was a yellow line painted along the floor, which indicated the border between Switzerland and France, we were told, and we played at jumping from one side to the other, amused by having a foot in each country.

  After two hours, Dad reappeared brandishing a phone number for the official, who left to call it. When he returned, the power had shifted from them to us. The official was looking at Dad like he knew he was guilty; he just wasn’t guilty of what the official suspected. He stamped our passports and handed them back, before we were released into France.

  No one said a word until we were on the road again, and Dad started laughing under his breath and shaking his head.

  “What happened?” Cait asked.

  “They thought I’d abducted you two.”