You Then, Me Now

by Nick Alexander

  Leif looked puzzled.

  ‘Just trust me,’ I said. ‘And don’t move. Whatever you do, don’t move.’

  ‘I’ll stay right here,’ Leif said.

  As I stood to leave, however, he jumped up and made a grab for my hand. ‘I’m scared,’ he said. ‘I’m scared you’ll disappear again and never come back.’

  ‘Then come,’ I said after a moment’s reflection. ‘It’s the same. Come with me.’

  We climbed the steps to street level then walked back past the refrigerated lobby and on up to the minimart. I peeped inside to find Baruch busy ringing up a woman’s purchases.

  ‘Becky?’ I asked, simply.

  Baruch shrugged. Then he caught a glimpse of Leif behind me and his eyes bulged. ‘Is that . . . ?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘See you later,’ I said.

  When we got to our unit the door was open. ‘Becky?’ I called out.

  ‘I’m in the bathroom,’ she called back.

  SEVENTEEN

  BECKY

  I smoked a couple of cigarettes on the wall outside the hotel. My hands were trembling – like, really trembling. They were shaking so much that when I took a drag, my cigarette banged against my lips. My heart was racing too, and my mind seemed to be working at triple speed yet failing to produce a single coherent thought. My head felt like a washing machine on the spin cycle, producing an unrecognisable blur of colour.

  Once I’d stubbed my third cigarette out, I decided it was time to see what was happening, but as I reached the entrance, a wave of fear swept over me – I just didn’t have the nerve. So I turned towards town instead. Whether I’d been right or wrong, the stress of finding out suddenly seemed unbearable.

  My mind was still a blur though; in fact, even my vision seemed out of kilter. And I found myself so unable to function that I bumped into a few people on the street. Even my navigational systems seemed to have packed up.

  So I gave up and, almost sprinting as I passed by the minimart, headed back down to our unit. I sat and smoked for a while and then, hoping that this would calm me down where the cigarettes had failed to do so, I decided to take a cool shower.

  The second Mum stepped into the room, I knew I had been right. Her eyes were red from crying but she had a peculiar glow about her, too. She looked – if this makes any sense to you – as if she’d found Jesus or Buddha or something. Her movements were languid, her features soft. Her voice sounded smoother than usual.

  ‘Come,’ she said, taking my hand and leading me out into the sunshine. The Buddha in question was standing there, looking out to sea.

  ‘Leif,’ she said. ‘This is Becky.’

  He turned to face me and there was a strange moment where we stared into each other’s eyes, looking, I think, for resemblance. Not in the eyes themselves, but behind them, in our souls.

  Leif wrinkled his brow. He looked puzzled. ‘Hello Becky,’ he said.

  ‘Hello . . . Dad?’ I offered dubiously.

  He paled before my eyes and it was only then that I realised Mum hadn’t forewarned him – she hadn’t explained who I was. I felt suddenly embarrassed and a little nauseous on Leif’s behalf, and furious, yet again, at my mother.

  We stared at each other for a few more seconds, and it really was like looking in a mirror, albeit a deforming mirror at a funfair. Actually, I’ll tell you what it was really like. You know those programs on the Internet that show you how you’d look as the opposite sex? Well it was like that. It was exactly like that. I was looking at me, but in the form of a fifty-year-old man.

  Leif turned to Mum. ‘Laura?’ he said.

  She nodded gently by way of reply and blinked slowly. Her eyes were moist and she still had that weird placid expression on her face and I toyed with the idea of slapping her out of it.

  ‘Herregud!’ Leif exclaimed, which sounded as if it might mean ‘Oh my God!’ or ‘Jesus!’ or maybe even ‘Fuck me!’

  ‘I . . . need to sit down,’ he said, all wobbly-voiced, as he folded back into a deckchair.

  I remained standing, watching his expression. I was still searching for similarities – there were many – but also desperately watching for any expression of pleasure on his part at having discovered a previously unknown daughter. But there was no such sign. He looked, if anything, as if he was going to throw up.

  ‘You’re twenty-three?’ he asked, apparently trying to confirm that the impossible thing which seemed to be happening here really was happening.

  I nodded. ‘Made in Oia,’ I said with a forced smile and a fake shrug.

  ‘Yes,’ Leif said weakly. ‘Yes, of course. Please . . . sit down with me.’ He gestured to a second deckchair, so I moved it to face him and sat. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit of a shock.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘I’ll, um, make tea!’ Mum said in that silly, bright voice of hers. ‘Anyone want tea? Yes, I’ll make a nice cup of tea.’ As she vanished into the house, I wished I had thought of that first. Because the tension out here was mad. It seemed to have sucked all the oxygen out of the air and I was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe.

  ‘I think . . .’ Leif started. ‘I think you are . . . Hmm. This is very hard, yes?’

  ‘Very,’ I confirmed.

  ‘But we look very alike, you agree?’

  ‘We do,’ I said.

  ‘Your hands,’ Leif said, nodding in their direction. ‘They are long, like mine. The fingers.’

  I nodded and held out one hand to compare. ‘My music teacher wanted me to do piano,’ I said, looking at my shaky hand rather than at Leif. ‘But I hated it. I could never read the music.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, music is very hard.’ He gestured towards my hand again and asked, ‘Can I?’

  I frowned for an instant because I didn’t understand what he meant. But then I realised that he wanted to take my hand and tremblingly offered it. He enveloped it within his own two hands. They were the same temperature and his skin felt a little like my own, albeit rougher.

  ‘I am surprised,’ he said. ‘You are very beautiful.’

  I felt myself blush at this and prised my hand free. It was all just too embarrassing.

  ‘Of course, your mother is beautiful too,’ he said. ‘It’s just me . . .’ He gestured at his own face and grimaced. ‘So your name is Becky?’

  I nodded. ‘It’s Rebecca,’ I said. ‘But everyone calls me Becky. Or Becks.’

  ‘It’s a lovely name,’ Leif said.

  ‘And your surname?’ I asked. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Vilhjálmsson,’ he said.

  I hadn’t really understood, but I nodded. ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘It’s Icelandic. My parents were Icelandic. But I am Norwegian.’

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  There was a moment’s silence, during which I could hear Mum faffing around indoors with cups and teaspoons. ‘Um, what do you do?’ I asked, not only because the silence was unbearable but because my many and varied fantasies about my father had all revolved around his superhero career status.

  ‘I am an engineer,’ Leif said. ‘I work on oil platforms. In the North Sea. You know, drilling?’

  ‘Right,’ I said, feeling vaguely disappointed.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me? I’ve, um, just finished college. I did humanities. I’m thinking about teacher training but I haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘You want to be a teacher?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Maybe. Or I might just look for a job. Any job. But there aren’t many. Everything’s a bit rubbish at the moment. What with the slowdown and Brexit and whatever . . .’ My voice faded out. I had heard myself rambling about inanities in the midst of one of the most important moments of my life and hadn’t liked it.

  ‘No,’ Leif said. ‘Of course.’

  Out of nowhere, a maelstrom of emotion began to swirl within me. It was made of a complex mixture of embarrassment for the tooth-achingly awkward conversatio
n we were having, anger at Leif for not making this moment magical, and with Mum, too, for having left me to it, for not having managed the whole introduction thing better. And if I’m honest, I was feeling angry at her for having chosen someone so ordinary and ecologically unsound to be my father, as well. I mean, oil drilling? Really?

  Before I even knew I was going to do it, I was standing, saying, ‘I can’t do this. I’m sorry, but I can’t,’ and storming off up the stairs.

  I had run to the top, marched a hundred yards along the street and started to redescend the Dreaded Steps when Mum caught up with me.

  ‘Becky!’ she was shrieking. ‘BECKY!’

  I paused to let her catch up with me, then sat on a step when she arrived.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked breathlessly.

  I shrugged and shook my head.

  ‘Talk to me,’ Mum said, sitting down beside me and resting one arm across my shoulders.

  ‘It’s not supposed to be like that,’ I said feebly.

  ‘What’s not supposed to be like what?’

  ‘Meeting your father,’ I said, ‘for the first time.’ I was playing the images I had created over the years across the cinema-screen of my mind and comparing them with the lacklustre reality of what had just happened.

  – Here we were, my father and I, hugging and crying in each other’s arms.

  – Here he was, appearing in a doorway, a god-like glow around his head, saying, ‘You are my daughter and I love you.’

  – Here he was again, pulling up outside in a big black car. ‘Your father’s outside waiting for you,’ Mum would say, and as I ran out to meet him, a chauffeur would open the rear door of the car revealing my father, who was rich, suited, elegant, smiling . . .

  Instead, the reality had been the kind of awkward conversation you’re forced to have with a friend’s father while you’re waiting for them to get ready. You know – How’s school going? How’s your mother doing?

  ‘It’s like there’s nothing,’ I said as the tears started to flow. ‘I expected to feel something, but there’s nothing there, Mum. I’ve waited so long and there’s just nothing there, you know?’

  She took me in her arms and gently started to rock me. ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘It takes time. You have to give it time.’

  ‘He’s just so ordinary,’ I said, crying freely and hating the spoilt-brat words even as I was saying them.

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ Mum said quietly. ‘Come back and you’ll see. He isn’t ordinary at all.’

  ‘It’s not supposed to be like this,’ I sobbed.

  ‘Only, perhaps it is, chicken,’ Mum said. ‘Perhaps it’s supposed to be exactly like this. How would we know?’

  Eventually, I let Mum lead me back there because I suppose that’s what I really wanted. I was already moving past my childish expectation that my father should be a superhero – I was understanding that he would, of course, be ordinary.

  When we got back, Leif was indoors chopping tomatoes. ‘I am thinking I can make some food,’ he said to Mum. ‘I hope you don’t mind?’

  Mum shook her head. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘That’s exactly what I was going to suggest. We have all this stuff I bought yesterday anyway, so . . .’

  I was lingering in the doorway, doing my best not to glower like a teenager, but I think I must have looked fairly miserable all the same because Leif took one look at me and stopped what he was doing. He dried his hands on a tea towel and came and stood opposite me. ‘If you want, I can go,’ he said.

  I shrugged. At that moment, it was the best I could manage.

  ‘Of course we don’t want you to go,’ Mum said. ‘Do we?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Leif continued. ‘I’m not very good at this. They don’t teach it in school, you know?’

  I snorted. ‘No,’ I said. ‘They didn’t teach me either.’

  ‘You know,’ Leif said, ‘I used to be terrible with either and neither.’ He turned to my mother. ‘Do you remember, Laura?’

  ‘I do,’ she said, reaching into the tiny refrigerator and pulling out a lettuce.

  He turned back to face me. ‘I know this is . . .’ he started. ‘I mean, if you don’t want, you can say no, OK?’

  ‘If I don’t want what?’ I asked.

  ‘A hug,’ Leif said. ‘I am thinking maybe a hug would help?’

  I swallowed and nodded nervously. Fresh tears were welling up even as he opened his arms. Because this was like something from one of those films I had imagined. This had been one of my fantasies. By the time his arms had closed around me, tears were running down my face.

  Mum watched for a minute, her head tipped slightly to one side, then she set down the lettuce and, wiping her hands on the back of her shorts, she crossed the room to join us. ‘May I?’ she asked, enveloping both of us in her arms. ‘I’ve waited so long for this.’

  For the first time in my life I had something I had always dreamed of: not one but two parents to hold me. And they were doing it, right here, right now – it was happening, and I felt as if I might collapse at the sheer emotion of it all. But the moment didn’t last long. I think embarrassment overcame all of us. So we separated and threw ourselves with vigour into the not particularly challenging task of putting lunch together.

  Mum washed lettuce leaves and Leif and I carried the little table outside and laid it. I opened the tubs of hummus and tzatziki that Mum had bought and sliced the bread.

  It was a strange feeling, doing something so ordinary. Because doing it together as a family was extraordinary. I felt like I was playing a part in a theatre piece, or working my way through one of the scenarios I’d spent my life building inside my head.

  As we ate, we began to chat almost normally. Mum and Leif – I couldn’t bring myself to call him Dad again – had a lot of catching up to do, and I felt honoured to be present, to be able to witness it all.

  Leif explained how he’d been married to a university professor and arch-feminist, and how they had argued about having children, an act which bizarrely she had claimed demeaned women. He said he’d brought her to Santorini once but it had been awful. He’d been thinking about Mum the whole time, and his wife – her name was Aslaug – hadn’t much liked the place.

  Both Mum and I wondered out loud how such a thing was possible but Leif insisted that it was. ‘Blue, blue, everywhere,’ he said, apparently channelling his ex-wife’s voice. ‘It’s just so boring, Leif.’

  Mum explained a little about her own marriage to Brian, too. But it was a very sweetened version, presumably for my benefit. I think that by the end of it, Leif must have been as confused as I was as to why they had finally split up.

  We talked a little about me, too. Mum ragged me about my ‘thing’ with Baruch, and Leif said that Santorini was a very romantic place and he wasn’t surprised at all. He’d seen Baruch, too, and agreed that he was a ‘very good-looking boy’.

  ‘Just don’t put his phone number in your suitcase,’ Leif joked, a joke which fell rather flat. We all sat in silence for a moment, thinking, I reckon, about all the trauma and lost opportunities that simple error had caused.

  ‘Can I ask a bit about Conor?’ I said eventually. It was the only subject that hadn’t been touched upon.

  ‘Of course,’ Mum said. ‘Ask anything you want.’ But her eyes seemed to say otherwise.

  ‘It’s just the accident, really,’ I said. ‘Can one of you tell me vaguely what happened?’

  ‘Oh,’ Mum said. ‘We don’t have to talk about that right now, do we?’

  ‘You just said I could ask anything,’ I reminded her. But seeing that she was already closing up like a clam, I turned to Leif instead. ‘Did you actually see it?’

  ‘Did I see what?’

  ‘The accident. Conor’s accident. Were you there when it happened?’

  ‘Oh, yes . . .’ Leif said. A shadow swept over his face. ‘I mean, no,’ he corrected himself, and I suspected that Mother had been giving him the evil eye behind my back.r />
  ‘Do you think I could have a word with Leif?’ Mum asked, confirming my suspicions.

  ‘What, so you can get your stories straight?’

  ‘No,’ Mum said. ‘No, that’s not it. What are you like? It’s just . . . just . . . Give us a minute, OK?’ She stood and beckoned to Leif. He looked utterly confused. I don’t think he had any idea what was going on.

  ‘You’re supposed to follow her,’ I explained. ‘So she can tell you what lies to tell me.’

  I almost walked away at that point. I sat there imagining their hushed tones behind the closed door and thought about leaving them to it. I even tensed my legs to stand a couple of times, but in the end I stayed. Whatever they were going to tell me, I was intrigued. Plus for some reason, I suspected that Leif wasn’t going to want to lie to me. I don’t know why I thought that, but I did. He just had one of those faces, I suppose.

  When they finally returned it seemed I was right. ‘So, Becky,’ Mum said, sounding businesslike. ‘We’ve discussed this, Leif and I, and there’s another bit of the story we need to tell you. But I need to know that I can trust you. Because it’s . . . well . . . sensitive, I suppose you could say.’

  ‘Trust me?’ I repeated, outraged. Then, ‘Sensitive? How?’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t trust you,’ Mum said. ‘I do. That’s why I want to tell you this . . . this thing. But you can’t tell anyone. Really. Not ever. If we tell you the truth, and Leif thinks we should, then you have to promise me.’

  ‘So I won’t tell anyone,’ I said. ‘No worries.’

  ‘Not even Baruch,’ Mum said.

  ‘Especially not Baruch,’ Leif commented gravely.

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ Mum agreed. ‘Especially not Baruch.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, solemnly. ‘Not even Baruch.’

  Mum sighed and she and Leif looked at each other, silently negotiating who should start.

  ‘I don’t know where to begin,’ Mum said.

  ‘At the beginning,’ Leif said. ‘On the night that Conor—’