One Brother Shy

by Terry Fallis

  “No, it shows here that she added you to the account about four years ago. You would have had to sign a signature card to make that change.”

  I had a memory shard of signing a couple of small cards from the bank that Mom had brought home one day. She’d said that the bank needed a next-of-kin signature for their records. I thought nothing of it at the time.

  “I see.”

  “Yes, it happened the same time she arranged her safety deposit box.”

  Good segue, Shelagh. I was just coming to the box.

  “Is it number 126?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “I have the key here. How do I go about getting access to the box?”

  “You can just come down any time and we’ll open it up, provided you have the key and some photo ID.”

  Kind of reminds me of drinking in my university years when I always had to present my driver’s licence before they’d serve me. I’m told I look younger than I am.

  “Oh, I didn’t think I could just have access to her safety deposit box so easily,” I said.

  “Well, it’s your box, too,” she replied. “It was secured jointly, in both of your names. So you are now the sole owner of safety deposit box number 126.”

  Well, seems Mom was quite the little organizer. But why not tell me about it?

  “I see. When I come in later today, could I also close out my mother’s Visa account and cancel her card? I have my own Visa.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’d also like to talk about my mother’s account to try to understand what’s coming in and what’s going out.”

  Like where this $5,000 is coming from every month that’s been putting a roof over our heads and food on our table for all these years.

  “No problem.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be in shortly.”

  “That would be fine. And I’m sorry about your mother.”

  I decided to walk to the bank. It wasn’t a short trip on foot, but I really needed the time and the air. I’d left Malaya back at the apartment. She’d arrived around 9:30, just as I was finishing up my call with Shelagh at the bank, and was now embarking on a complete cleanse of the entire apartment, including waxing the floors, dusting, and cleaning out the kitchen drawers. I hadn’t realized that people still waxed floors. And dusting? Anyway, I tried to talk her out of it, but I didn’t try for long. She was determined. It seemed to be how she was working through her grief. I had yet to figure out how to work through mine, other than shedding some tears at night and trying to stay busy.

  It was a lovely day. Weather-wise, I mean. Just about room temperature with a light breeze. I pulled my Ottawa Senators ball cap down low, kept my eyes fixed on the ground, and walked. I didn’t look at anyone else on the street. I seldom did, just to minimize the likelihood of being recognized. That hadn’t happened for quite a while, years in fact. I guess I look a bit different now, the longer hair and all. Still, I don’t like to take chances.

  It took about twenty minutes at a brisk pace to bring me to the Royal Bank of Canada branch on Rideau almost at Nicholas Street. It was just past opening time, Wednesday morning, so the branch wasn’t exactly brimming with customers. Just the way I liked it.

  Shelagh Dunn was very nice. We sat in her office for about ten minutes. It didn’t take long to transact what business we had. I showed her the death certificate and she scanned it with her fancy desktop device, then handed it back to me. In about thirty seconds, Shelagh had removed the name Lee MacAskill from the joint account that I now held all on my own. I literally watched Mom’s name disappear from the computer monitor, leaving “Alex MacAskill” still standing at the top of the account summary screen. You die. You disappear. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but seeing her erased with the click of a mouse made her death seem all the more real.

  “Can I ask about the $5,000 deposit that comes into the account on the first of each month?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she replied. “What can I help you with?”

  “Well, my mother always referred to a pension she had, but I’ve since discovered that her employer has never had a pension plan, and certainly not one that would pay my mother a flat $5k every month. So I’d like to know where it comes from and why we receive it.”

  Not that I’m not grateful. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s a bit odd, don’t you think?

  “Let me have a look,” she said, her fingers tinkling the keyboard.

  When she reached the screen she wanted, she turned the monitor so I could see it and pointed to a line on the screen.

  “Ah, there we go. You can see here that the monthly deposit is not via cheque, but through an international wire transfer from the FirstCaribbean Bank in Grand Cayman. FirstCarib is actually owned by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.”

  No shit! Grand Cayman? I guess that’s better than a bank owned by some syndicate in Chechnya, or a paramilitary faction in Yemen, or maybe a community social club in Sicily.

  “Just so I understand this correctly, each month, my mother’s account, I guess I mean my account now, receives $5,000 from a Canadian-owned bank in the Cayman Islands?”

  “Exactly,” she replied.

  “Is it always a flat $5,000?” I asked.

  “For as long as I’ve been here,” she replied.

  This sounds like something straight out of a Robert Ludlum novel. The hair on the back of my neck just…well, it just did whatever neck hair does when something freaks you out.

  “But who is sending it? Where is it actually coming from?” I asked.

  And please don’t tell me Grand Cayman is a haven for organized crime, or that this is a common international money-laundering scheme, or that drug money is the most likely explanation.

  “All we know is that the money comes from the account of a numbered company, duly registered in Grand Cayman. And that’s all we’re permitted to know. That’s all they legally need to disclose under international banking regulations.”

  What kind of world are we living in when you can receive money but have no idea who it’s from, what it’s for, or worse, when they’re coming to get it back? Again with the Ludlum thing, or maybe LeCarré? Weird.

  “I see,” I replied. “My online banking app only goes back a few years. Can you tell me when these monthly deposits started?”

  Shelagh Dunn swung the screen back in front of her, though I could still see it on an angle. She moused around a bit and banged in a few keystrokes. Then she stopped and scrolled up to the top of a large table filled with words and numbers in a very small font. She leaned in close.

  “Okay, here we are. The first cheque arrived in the account January 1, 1991. Back then it was only $3,500 each month. Same bank, same numbered company as today.”

  That was a week after I was born. Seems a little young to be earning a salary.

  Her fingers kept moving.

  “It went to $4,000 a month in January 1999. Then to $4,500 a month in January 2007, and finally to the current level of $5,000 a month in January 2013.”

  A mysterious monthly payment, periodically adjusted for inflation. Sure doesn’t seem like a pension benefit to me. Do you think my mother was an assassin? A drug lord? A spy? Kidding, but curious. Well, sort of kidding.

  “Do we have any way of knowing if the monthly payments will continue now that my mother is, well, gone?” I asked.

  “No, I’m sorry, we just don’t know. I guess we’ll find out at the first of the month.”

  “But couldn’t I track down the numbered company and call them?”

  Even though I really don’t like calling people, particularly if they might be from the criminal classes.

  “You can try, but it’s usually a numbered company for a reason, particularly when headquartered in the Caribbean,” she said. “There’s really not much you can do. From our perspective at the bank, it’s a perfectly legal and legitimate transaction.”

  Right. Spoken like John Gotti’s lawye
r.

  “Thank you for the information,” I replied.

  We then closed my mother’s Visa account. She was fully up to date on her payments, as I knew she would be. Finally, we excised Mom’s name from the safety deposit box records, leaving me as the sole holder.

  “Would now be a good time for me to check my safety deposit box?”

  “Of course, as long as you have the key and one piece of photo ID.”

  I held up the key for her to see and then handed over my driver’s licence. After she’d checked the key number and handed back my ID, she stood up and led me down to the back of the bank. As she walked, she jangled a set of keys she’d taken from her bottom drawer. Bankers and jailers were born to jangle keys. We stepped through what looked like a vault door – probably because it was a vault door – into a brightly lit, well, vault, with a low ceiling. Claustrophobes might have felt a bit antsy. All four walls of the vault were floor-to-ceiling grids of numbered rectangular doors, each with two keyholes. She stopped in front of number 126, chose a key from the jumble in her hand, and inserted it. She nodded to me and I inserted mine in the other keyhole. I felt like a soldier in a missile silo about to launch a nuclear strike. We both turned our keys and the door swung open, revealing a flat black box. She pulled the box out of its steel cubby and put it on the table in the centre of the room.

  “I’ll give you some privacy. Just call me when you’re done and we’ll lock it up again.”

  “Thank you for your help,” I replied, as she left me alone in the vault.

  I felt very strange at that moment. I sat down in one of the two chairs. My heart rate rose as I tried to figure out how to open the box. I finally saw that the top of it was really a hinged flap that simply swung up to reveal the inside of the box. I lifted the lid a few inches and then lowered it again before seeing what might be inside. I looked at my hands for a moment and breathed. I had no idea what I was expecting to find inside. Stacks of cash? A kilo of cocaine? Classified recipes from the Cordon Bleu Institute? I took a few more deep breaths and folded back the flat lid.

  No cash. No blow. No recipes. Just another white envelope, again, with my name written on it. The smooth, neat, and clean script was, again, unmistakably in my mother’s hand, but before she was laid low by the relentless march of her vindictive, breathtaking disease. This did nothing to calm my pounding pulse. I stared at the envelope for a time without picking it up. I don’t know for how long. I scanned the vault to confirm I was still alone, and then I picked up the envelope. No key inside this time. Nothing was moving inside. But it was thick, and it was sealed. As before, I used my finger to open it. My fingers were trembling as I drew out the folded paper.

  I knew what it was immediately, instantly. I unfolded the document and smoothed it out on the table. My mother had affixed a single wooden Lucky Strike match to the top right corner of the front page with a piece of clear tape. It was the program from the 2005 Christmas pageant we’d put on at high school. I knew why it was there. I knew why the match was attached. I set it aside and reached again for the envelope. There was one more item inside. I pulled it out.

  It was another photo, but a complete, uncut one this time, its white border completely circumnavigating the image. The left-hand portion of the photo looked very familiar. I was quite sure it was the half-photo I’d found in the envelope Mom had left for me under her pillow. There I was again, as a newborn, held in the right arm of a mysterious man in a white T-shirt and blue jeans. But what I couldn’t yet fully process was what the other half of the photo revealed. My newborn self also appeared to be ensconced in the crook of the man’s left arm, too. He was holding two of me. There were two interchangeable, absolutely identical babies.

  With my mind nearly shutting down and refusing to assimilate what I was seeing, I thrust my hand into my pocket and yanked out my wallet. I pulled the folded envelope from the slot usually occupied only by fives, tens, and twenties. I removed the half-photo I’d discovered the day before and lined it up underneath the whole photo from the safety deposit box. I studied them both. Eventually I concluded that, yes, they were two copies of the same photograph. Everything from the left-hand portion of the whole photo perfectly matched the half-photo I’d brought with me.

  I turned over the new photo and found my mother’s handwriting. There was “2/3” in the top left corner, and “December 24, 1990” across the middle. That’s when my memory nudged me. It shouldn’t have taken so long, but I was not myself in that moment. I turned over the half-photo I’d brought with me and lined it up underneath the flipped whole photo. On my half-photo, the unexplained “0” was suddenly explained. It was in the same position as the “0” in “1990” on the back of the whole photo. (Have I lost you yet? Are you still with me?)

  I turned over the new photo again and stared at it. The man, still with no face, but his torso finally whole, held me in his right arm, but also in his left. I was baffled. Was it trick photography of some kind? A double exposure? Photoshop? Hallucinations? I then noticed what looked like a tattoo on the man’s left arm just above the elbow. The angle of the shot and the placement of the baby (me?) obscured it, but you could clearly see he had one.

  Without being a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon, even I was able to conclude from my careful examination of the two photos that they were copies of the same shot. The notation on the back of the new one, “2/3,” in the top left corner, suggested that there were, in fact, three copies of the same photo, and I was in possession of precisely one and a half of them. I was quite proud of my deductive reasoning. But I was probably doing all of this thinking and deliberating as a way to postpone considering the most pressing question. What the hell was I looking at?

  I brought the complete version of the photograph closer and stared first at me in the man’s left arm, and then at me in the man’s right arm. I did that for a couple of minutes, scanning back and forth, without interruption. Then I sat back, closed my eyes, and tried very hard not to pass out. I consciously breathed slowly and deeply, my eyes still closed, but my pulse at windsprint rates. When I felt a little calmer, I opened my eyes to the photograph again. It was now obvious, unmistakable, and utterly clear to me, as it would have been to any fair-minded observer. I said it out loud before I ever said it in my head. I think I was trying to make it real.

  “I am a twin. I have an identical twin brother.”

  The photo made it undeniable that we were identical and not fraternal. The two faces in the shot were literally one and the same. I looked for even the most minute facial differences in the two babies, and came up empty. I was – we were – one day old when the photo was taken. I assumed my mother snapped it, and that we were held in the arms of the father I never knew.

  It dawned on me that this must have been what Mom had wanted to talk to me about the night before she died. Anger surged. I’m twenty-four years old and I find out after my mother dies that she gave birth to two sons on December 23, 1990. What’s up with that? I was a twin. Who is he? Where is he? Is he even alive? Where are the other photos? Why didn’t you tell me? How could you not tell me?

  I tried and tried, but I couldn’t think of a reason for her to keep this from me. I was mad. I was steaming. I think my anger was the only thing that kept me from blubbering. The swirling emotions of the moment and my mother’s death fused in the vault of safety deposit boxes. I was a little messed up for a few minutes, but pulled myself together and wiped my eyes dry on my sleeve. What made all of this worse was there were no answers, and no easy path to finding them. I sat for another ten minutes staring at the photograph, trying to come to any other conclusion than the obvious one I’d already drawn. But I couldn’t. No one could. The incontrovertible evidence was right in front of my eyes.

  Shelagh Dunn stuck her head in.

  “How are we doing in here?”

  Well, my life’s just gotten a whole lot freakier on account of discovering I have an identical twin brother. But thanks for asking. How are you?
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  “Just fine, thank you,” I replied, coughing to cover any residual stress in my voice.

  “We have a couple of customers here who need something from their box.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I’m finished in here.”

  I put both photos and the pageant program in the envelope and slipped it into the back pocket of my jeans. I closed up the now empty black steel box and slid it into the recess in the wall where it belonged. I closed the door and turned my key to lock it. Shelagh looked in, saw that I was ready, and entered to lock her side of Box 126.

  I thanked her and left. I walked back but kept on going right past our apartment. I just didn’t feel like going home yet. I carried on to Strathcona Park on the bank of the Rideau River. I really don’t remember the walk. My mind was either empty or overflowing, I’m not sure which. I sat down on a bench along the water and didn’t move for five hours. When I stood up from the bench, I was exhausted, but I had a new purpose and a new plan.

  I was just about back at the apartment when my cellphone rang. I didn’t recognize the number on the screen.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hi, is that Alex?” a man’s voice asked.

  “Speaking.”

  “Alex, it’s Doug Evans. I’m your mother’s investment advisor at RBC.”

  I’m not sure you know this, Doug, but my mother really liked you. She said you were smart and kind – one of her favourite combinations. By the way, I just learned that I’m an identical twin. Don’t you think no one should find that out at the age of twenty-four?

  “Oh, hello,” I answered.

  “I just wanted to say I’m so sorry to hear the news about her. I really enjoyed working with her.”

  “Thank you.”

  “As well, I wanted to let you know, in case you didn’t already know, that your mother instructed me to designate her entire Registered Retirement Savings Plan to flow to you. We made the arrangements with her lawyer several months ago. I’ve prepared the necessary paperwork and now just need your signature to complete the transfer.”

  “I see,” I replied.