Factoring Humanity

3

Heather wasn’t teaching any courses during the summer session, thank God. She’d tossed and turned all night after Becky’s visit and hadn’t managed to get out of bed until 11:00 AM.

How do you go on from something like this, she wondered.

Mary had died sixteen months ago.

No, thought Heather. No—face it head-on. Mary had committed suicide sixteen months ago. They’d never known why Becky had been living at home back then; it had been she who had found her sister’s body.

How do you go on?

What do you do next?

The year Becky was born, Bill Cosby had lost his son Ennis. Heather, with a newborn sucking at her breast, and a two-year-old bundle of energy racing around the house, had been moved to write a note to Cosby, in care of CBS, expressing sympathy. As a mother, she knew nothing could be more devastating than the loss of a child. Tens of thousands wrote such notes, of course. Cosby—or his staff, at any rate—had replied, thanking her for the concern.

Somehow, Bill Cosby had gone on.

At the same time, another father was in the news every night: Fred Goldman, father of Ron Goldman, the man killed alongside Nicole Brown Simpson. Fred was furious with O.J. Simpson, the person he was convinced had slaughtered his boy. Fred’s anger was palpable, exploding from the TV set. The Goldman family published a book, His Name Is Ron. Heather had even gone to meet them when they’d autographed copies at the Chapters superstore down by the university. She knew, of course, that the book would be remaindered a few months later, like all the other flotsam tied into the Simpson trial, but she bought a copy anyway, getting Fred to sign it—showing her support, one parent to another.

Somehow, Fred Goldman had gone on.

When Mary had killed herself, Heather had looked to see if the Goldman book was still among their collection. It was indeed, standing on a living-room shelf, next to Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace, another hardcover Heather had broken the budget for at about the same time. Heather had taken down the Goldman book and opened it. There were pictures of Fred in it, but all of them were happy, family shots—not the face she remembered, the one seething with fury, all of it directed at Simpson.

When your child takes his or her own life, where do you direct the anger? At whom do you aim it?

The answer is no one. You internalize it—and it eats you up from the inside, bit by bit, day by day.

And the answer is everyone. You lash out, at your husband, your other child, your coworkers.

Oh, yes. You go on. But you’re never the same.

But now—

Now, if Becky was right—

If Becky was right, there was someone to aim the anger at.

Kyle. Becky’s father; Heather’s estranged husband.

As she walked south along St. George Street, she thought about that framed alien radio message on their living-room wall. Heather was a psychologist; she’d spent the last decade trying to decipher the alien messages, trying to plumb the alien mind. She knew that particular message better than anyone else on the planet did—she’d published two papers about it—and yet she still had no idea what it really said; she didn’t really know it at all.

Heather had known Kyle for almost a quarter of a century.

But did she really know him at all?

She tried to clear her mind, tried to set aside the shock of the night before.

The sun was bright that afternoon. She squinted against it and wondered again about the aliens who were sending the messages. If nothing else, sunlight like this was something humans shared with the Centaurs—no one knew what the aliens looked like, of course, but political cartoonists had taken to drawing them like their namesakes from Greek mythology. Alpha Centauri A was almost an exact twin for Earth’s sun: both were spectral-class G2V, both had a temperature of 5800 Kelvin—so both shone down on their planets with the same yellow-white light. Yes, cooler, smaller Alpha Centauri B might add an orange hue when it, too, was visible in the sky—but there would be times when only A would be up—and at those times, the Centaurs and the humans would have looked out on identically illuminated landscapes.

She continued on down the street, heading to her office.

We go on, she thought. We go on.

The next morning—Saturday, July 22—Kyle rode the subway four stops past his usual destination of St. George station, all the way to Osgoode.

Becky’s boyfriend Zack Malkus worked as a clerk at a book-shop on Queen Street West. That much Kyle remembered from what little Becky had said to him over the past year. Which bookshop Kyle didn’t know—but there weren’t many left. During his high-school years, Kyle had often ventured down to Queen on a Saturday afternoon, looking for new science fiction at Bakka, new comics at The Silver Snail, and out-of-print works at the dozen or so used bookstores that had lined the street back then.

But independent bookstores had been having a hard time. Most had either relocated to less-trendy areas, where the rent was more modest, or had simply gone out of business. These days, Queen Street West was home mostly to trendy cafés and bistros, although the rococo headquarters of one of Canada’s broadcasting empires was located near the subway exit at University Avenue. There couldn’t be more than three or four bookstores left, so Kyle decided to simply try them all.

He began with venerable Pages, on the north side. He looked around—unlike Becky, Zack was in university, so he presumably probably did work on weekends, rather than during the week. But there was no sign of Zack’s blond, rangy form. Still, Kyle went up to the cashier, a stunning East Indian woman with eight earrings. “Hello,” he said.

She smiled at him.

“Does Zack Malkus work here?”

“We’ve got a Zack Barboni,” she said.

Kyle felt his eyes widening slightly. When he’d been a kid, everyone had had normal names—David, Robert, John, Peter. The only Zack he’d ever heard of was the bumbling Zachary Smith on the old TV series Lost in Space. Now it seemed that every kid he ran into was a Zack or an Odin or a Wing.

“No, that’s not him,” said Kyle. “Thanks anyway.”

He continued west. Panhandlers hit him up for donations along the way; there’d been a time in his youth when panhandlers were so rare in Toronto that he could never bring himself to say no. But they’d become plentiful in downtown, although they always solicited with studied Canadian politeness. Kyle had perfected the straight-ahead Torontonian gaze: jaw set, never meeting the eyes of a beggar, but still making his head swing through a tiny arc of “no” to each request; it would be rude, after all, to completely ignore someone who was talking to you.

Toronto the Good, he thought, recalling an old advertising slogan. Although the beggars today were a mixed group, many were Native Canadians—what Kyle’s father still called “Indians.” In fact, Kyle couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a Native Canadian anywhere except begging on a street corner, although there were doubtless still many on reservations someplace. Several years ago, he’d had a couple of Natives in one of his classes, sent there on a now-defunct government program, but he couldn’t think of a single U of T faculty member—even, ironically, in Native Studies—who was a Canadian aborigine.

Kyle continued on until he came to Bakka. The store had started on Queen West in 1972, had moved away a quarter-century later, and now was back, not far from its original location. Kyle felt sure he’d have remembered—and that Becky would have mentioned it—if Zack worked there. Still…

Painted on the shop’s plate-glass front window was the derivation of the store’s name:

Bakka must be working overtime these days, thought Kyle.

He entered the store and spoke to the bearded, elfin man behind the counter. But no Zack Malkus worked there, either.

Kyle continued to search. He was wearing a Tilley safari shirt and blue jeans—not much different from what he wore while teaching.

The next store was about a block farther along, on the south side of the street. Kyle waited for a red-and-white streetcar—recently converted to maglev travel—to hum quietly past, then made his way across.

This store was much more upscale than Bakka; someone had recently put a lot of money into renovating the old brownstone building that housed it, and the stone facade had been sand-blasted clean; most people drove skimmers these days, but many of the buildings still carried the grime of decades of automobile exhaust.

A chime sounded as Kyle entered. A dozen or so patrons were in the shop. Perhaps in response to the chime, a clerk appeared from behind a dark wooden bookcase.

It was Zack.

“Mis—Mister Graves,” he said.

“Hello, Zack.”

“What are you doing here?” He said it with venom, as if any reference to Kyle was distasteful.

“I need to talk to you.”

Dismissively: “I’m working.”

“I can see that. When’s your break?”

“Not until noon.”

Kyle did not look at his watch. “I’ll wait.”

“But—”

“I have to talk to you, Zack. You owe me that much.”

The boy pursed his lips, thinking. Then he nodded.

Kyle did wait. Normally he liked browsing in bookshops—especially the kind with real paper volumes—but he was too nervous to concentrate today. He spent some time looking at an old copy of Colombo’s Canadian Quotations, reading what people had said about family life. Colombo contended that the most famous Canadian quotation of all was McLuhan’s “The medium is the message.” That was likely true, but one that was uttered more frequently, even if it wasn’t uniquely Canadian, was “My children hate me.”

There was still some time to kill. Kyle left the store. Next door was a poster shop. He went in and looked around; it was decorated all in chrome and black enamel. There were lots of Robert Bateman wildlife paintings. Some Group of Seven stuff. A series of prints by Jean-Pierre Normand. Photo portraits of current pop-music stars. Old movie posters—from Citizen Kane to The Fall of the Jedi. Hundreds of holoposters of landscapes and spacescapes and seascapes.

And Dali—Kyle had always liked Dali. There was “Persistence of Memory”—the one with the melting watches. And “The Sacrament of the Last Supper.” And—

Say, that one would be great for his students. “Christus Hypercubus.” It had been years since he’d seen it anywhere, and it sure would liven up the lab.

He’d doubtless take some flak for hanging a picture with religious overtones, but what the heck. Kyle found the slot that had rolled-up copies of the poster in it and took one up to the cashier, a small Eastern European man.

“Thirty-five ninety-five,” said the clerk. “Plus plus plus.” Plus PST, GST, and NST—Canadians were the most taxed people in the world.

Kyle handed over his SmartCash card. The clerk placed it in the reader, and the total was deleted from the chip on the card. The clerk then wrapped a small bag around the poster tube and handed it to Kyle.

Kyle headed back to the bookstore. A few minutes later, Zack’s break came.

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” asked Kyle.

Zack looked as though he was still very reluctant, but after a moment he said, “The office?” Kyle nodded, and Zack led him into the back room, which seemed to be more a storage facility than anything that might justly be termed an office. Zack closed the door behind them. Rickety bookcases and two beat-up wooden desks filled the space. No money had been spent upgrading this part of the store; outward appearances were everything.

Zack offered Kyle the single chair, but Kyle shook his head. Zack sat down. Kyle leaned against a bookcase, which shifted slightly. He backed off, not wanting it to come toppling down on him; he’d had enough of that lately.

“Zack, I love Becky,” said Kyle.

“No one,” said Zack firmly, “who loved her could do what you did.” He hesitated for a moment, as if wondering whether to push his luck. But then, with the righteousness of the young, he added, “You sick bastard.”

Kyle felt like hauling back and hitting the kid. “I didn’t do anything. I’d never hurt her.”

“You did hurt her. She can’t…”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

But Kyle had learned a lesson or two from Cheetah. “Tell me.”

Zack seemed to consider, then, finally, he just blurted it out. “She can’t even have sex anymore.”

Kyle felt his heart jump. Of course Becky was sexually active; she was nineteen, for Pete’s sake. Still, although he’d suspected it, he didn’t like hearing about it.

“I never touched her inappropriately. Never.”

“She wouldn’t like me talking to you.”

“Damn it, Zack, my family is being torn apart. I need your help.”

Sneering now: “That’s not what you said Thursday night. You said it was a family matter. You said I had no place there.”

“Becky won’t talk to me. I need you to intercede.”

“What? Tell her that you didn’t do it? She knows you did it.”

“I can prove that I didn’t do it. That’s why I came here. I want you to agree to come by the university.”

Zack, who was wearing a Ryerson T-shirt, bristled; Kyle knew that those who attended Toronto’s other two universities hated the way U of T types always referred to it as the university. “Why?” asked Zack.

“They teach forensics at U of T,” said Kyle. “We’ve got a polygraph lab, and I know a guy who works there. He’s been an expert witness in hundreds of cases. I want you to come to that lab, and I’ll have myself hooked up to a lie detector. I’ll let you ask me any questions you want about this topic, and you’ll see that I’m telling the truth. I didn’t hurt Becky—I couldn’t hurt her. You’ll see that that’s true.”

“You could get your friend to rig the test.”

“We can have the test done somewhere else, then. You name the lab; I’ll pay for it. Then, once you know the truth, maybe you can help me get through to Becky.”

“A pathological liar can beat a lie detector.”

Kyle’s face went flush. He surged forward, grabbed the boy’s shirtfront. But then he backed off, spreading his arms, palms face out. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry.” He fought to calm down. “I tell you, I’m innocent. Why won’t you let me prove it?”

Zack’s face was flush now; adrenaline must have surged through him when he thought Kyle was going to rough him up. “I don’t need you to take a test,” he said, his voice ragged. “Becky told me what you did. She’s never lied to me.”

Of course she has, thought Kyle. People lie to other people all the time. “I didn’t do this,” he said again.

Zack shook his head. “You don’t know the kinds of problems Becky had. She’s getting better now, though. She cried for hours after we left your place on Thursday, but she’s a lot better.”

“But, Zack, you know that Becky and I have lived apart for almost a year now. If I’d really been doing something wrong, surely she would have left earlier, or at least have said something as soon as she got out of the house. Why on earth—”

“You think this is easy to talk about? Her therapist says—”

“Therapist?” Kyle felt as if he’d been struck. His own daughter was in therapy. Why the fuck didn’t he know this? “What the hell was she in therapy for?”

Zack made a face indicating the answer was obvious.

“What’s the therapist’s name? If I can’t convince you, maybe I can convince him.”

“I… don’t know.”

“You’re lying.”

But the accusation just made Zack more determined. “I’m not. I don’t know.”

“How did she find this therapist?”

Zack shrugged a little. “It was the same one her older sister had used.”

“Mary?” Kyle staggered backward, bumping into the other wooden desk. There was a half-eaten donut sitting on a napkin on its corner; it fell to the floor, crumbling in two. “Mary was in therapy, too?”

“Of course she was. Who can blame her, after what you did to her?”

“I didn’t do anything to Mary. And I didn’t do anything to Becky, either.”

“Now who’s lying?” said Zack.

“I’m not—” He paused, trying to get his voice under control. “Damn it, Zack. God fucking damn it. You are in this with her. The two of you are going to file a lawsuit, aren’t you?”

“Becky doesn’t want your money,” Zack said. “She just wants peace; she just wants closure.”

“Closure? What the fuck kind of word is that? Is that what her therapist told her this was all about? Fucking closure?”

Zack stood up. “Mr. Graves, go home. And for God’s sake, get to a therapist yourself.”

Kyle stormed out of the office, through the retail area, and out into the hellish heat of the summer day.