The Infinity of You & Me

by J. Q. Coyle

  “You’ve got me now,” my father says. “You’ll leave her alone then, okay. That’s my daughter!” I’ve never heard my father claim me, and I never thought I would. His ruddy cheeks are streaked with dirt. As the two assistants haul him to his feet, one of them sneers a smile at me—the one I thought I recognized earlier. And right then I know exactly where I saw him before: he was driving the car that pulled out behind my mother when we were leaving Jane’s office. Alex has these guys tailing me? One of the assistants jerks my father hard, and my father jerks back to right himself.

  “Stop them!” I shout at Alex.

  Alex opens his arms wide, looking exhausted, like this is one long battle—and maybe it has been. He looks like he just wants this whole thing to be over. “I’m doing everything I can to help you, Alicia. To protect your mother and you. Do you hear me?”

  It all sounds condescending to me. He’s just treating me like a child. I want to yell at him, but my mother would kill me if I so much as talked back to him.

  Still, I’m about to go off just as Mr. and Mrs. Butler walk onto the deck, Arnie’s yapping in Mr. Butler’s arms.

  “What’s happened?” Mrs. Butler asks.

  “What in the goddamn?” Mr. Butler says.

  “Yes!” I say. “What in the goddamn?”

  “Let’s go back inside,” Jane says, herding them through the sliding door.

  “Take him to the car,” Alex tells his assistants, who pull Ellington across the yard toward an alleyway between two row houses.

  “It’s okay, Francesca,” Alex calls, shutting the metal gate behind him. “We’ll get him out of here. Maybe we can talk some sense into him this time.”

  She doesn’t thank him. She just manages a nod, and then she quickly runs down the steps to me. “Are you okay?”

  My heart is pounding and my head is buzzing with everything my father said. “Why’d Alex send those guys after him?”

  She reaches out to me, but I step away. “You have to trust Alex,” she says. “If he can cure you, then you can be free. We just have to keep playing our cards right. Just a little longer and then—”

  “Stop!” I say. I run to the gate, unlatch it, drag it open—metal grating on cement.

  Alex cuts me off at the end of the alley, takes me by the shoulders, gently.

  “Let him go!” I shout at Alex.

  “You think he wasn’t here to cause trouble? Alicia, you don’t know anything about your father. We’ve protected you from all of that.” A sad look crosses his face. “Maybe that was a mistake.”

  I shake him off and run into the street. The gray sky is crossed through with wires. The two guys have pushed my father into the backseat of my uncle’s car. It’s only now that I see they look like linebackers, not research assistants.

  I wheel around and stare at my uncle. “What are you going to do with him?”

  Jane walks out of the house, keys in hand.

  “Jane! Tell him to let my dad go! Tell him!” I’m desperate.

  She shakes her head. “Try not to worry,” she says, but her voice is jangled. She’s obviously shaken. “I’m sorry this had to happen, Alicia. But it’s for the best. I’ll see you soon.” She jogs to her car.

  “What the hell?” I say.

  “I’m standing by this family, Alicia,” Alex says, walking to the driver’s seat. “If that feels unfamiliar to you, it’s because your father never managed to show you how it’s done.” Alex gets behind the wheel.

  I stand there, breathless, blood pounding in my ears.

  As Alex revs the engine, I see my father through the window in the backseat. I run to him. He looks back at me, dirt on his face, worn out, but then he smiles wearily and lifts two of my pill bottles, ones he must have stolen from my coat pockets when he was hugging me, and taps them on the window as the car pulls away. I wonder for a split second if my father really wanted me to quit taking the pills or if he just wanted them for himself—a druggie and a thief.

  But I know that’s not right. My father came here and he told me the truth. For once, someone was telling me the truth.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHEN THE car is out of sight, I turn around.

  My mother is standing back a few feet from me, arms folded against the cold.

  “He didn’t do anything to me,” I say. “He didn’t deserve that.”

  “You don’t understand.” My mother looks so small, brittle enough to shatter. Who was she when she was with my father? Who was she when they fell in love and when they fell apart? All these years it’s been easy to believe that my father was exactly what my mother and Alex had told me—maybe a good guy deep down but also the black sheep, unpredictable, crazy, a deserter. What if my mother’s a liar—even if she’s done it to protect me?

  I squeeze my father’s present in my pocket, the frayed newspaper in my grip, and I wait for her answer.

  She just closes her eyes and turns away from me.

  I walk to the house, leaving her standing in the yard. I throw open the front door and pass the Butlers, who are still in the living room, looking disoriented and lost.

  “Party’s over,” I tell them. “Thanks for the five bucks.” The card sits unopened on the coffee table.

  I run up the stairs to my room and slam the door.

  I pace around, feeling caged. I toss the present my dad gave me on the bed and stare at it.

  I don’t want to open it. I don’t want to be disappointed, and I know the present will be disappointing.

  It sits there wrapped in its wrinkled newsprint, looking sad and disappointing. I’m so used to telling myself that I don’t want anything from my derelict father that I really don’t want to want to open it, so I pretend that I don’t want to.

  I open the drawer on my bedside table and pull out the one picture I have of my father: I’m a three-year-old standing between him and a snowman, the snowflakes swirling around us. My father looks so much younger, not tired, not worn. His cheeks are red. He looks happy, one hand reaching down toward me; maybe he wanted to make sure I wouldn’t topple over.

  I put the photo back, shut the drawer, sit down on the bed, and my eyes are right back on the gift. I turn it over, slide a finger under the tape and pop it loose, then rip the newspaper.

  And there is something I’ve seen only once before—the strangely shaped wooden cross that wasn’t a cross. My father took it out after I’d been shot on the sinking cruise ship. I feel a shiver. This existed in what I thought was my twisted imagination. But here it is. I pick it up and turn it in my hands. The wood is polished. None of the ends are sharp enough to pierce the skin, but some are more pointed than others. I grip it the way he did, tightly, and it seems to fit my hand. It feels familiar. If nothing else, it’s like a baton he’s passed from what I thought was a fake world into my own.

  If my father was telling the truth, and those other worlds I’ve been seeing are real, has he known me in those other worlds all these years?

  And in this world, I got none of him?

  And now he’s gone again.

  But, still, he exists in a way he hasn’t ever existed before. He was worried about an atlas—a book of maps—but he also wanted me to make my own map, of what? I want to ask him, but he’s gone. I feel like a hole has been punched through my heart, like I’ve been abandoned all over again.

  And then my mother’s at the door. She knocks sharply, and, as she opens the door, I put the tool in my jacket pocket with my phone. “I got called in to take a shift.”

  “Really?”

  She looks down and I know she’s lying. I’m guessing that she wants out of this house, away from me. “Then go. Take it.”

  She has her hand on the knob and twists it. “I know you’re upset, Alicia.”

  “Why couldn’t I see him all these years? Why did you keep him from me?”

  “I’ve always done the best I could—”

  “Please don’t go into how hard it’s been as a single mom. Save it for Waybourne. I want
to know about my father. The truth this time.”

  “You know the truth. He’s always been himself. He’s always made things hard, and so maybe he’d have played a bigger part in your life, but we thought it was best for you not to have him around too much, not to—”

  “We thought it was best? You and Alex? Was my father just not good enough for you? Are you embarrassed of him? Why don’t you just date Alex; he’s your knight in shining armor, right?”

  My mother charges at me, and I think she’s going to slap me. She’s never hit me before, and I kind of want her to—like leaning into the knife. Go ahead, I think.

  But she stops short. We lock eyes and then she just turns and walks to the door. She pauses there, holding the knob again. “Don’t you think I’ve missed him, too?”

  I want to tell her that I have no idea what to think. She’s never told me. But I remember how she shouted out to him to run and how he looked at her, heartbroken, refusing to. Maybe you can love someone even though you know you shouldn’t.

  She pulls the door shut, giving a final click.

  I’m completely rattled. I pick up the tool in one hand and call Hafeez on my cell with the other.

  It rings and rings, and I almost hang up because I can’t even begin to figure out what to say to a machine.

  Finally, he picks up and says hello, sounding groggy.

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “I was stealing cars,” he says, meaning he’s been gaming in his basement.

  “My father showed up.”

  “On a ship this time?”

  “No, real life. Backyard.”

  “What?”

  “He got hauled off. I don’t know what to do. He told me that what I’ve been seeing is real, Hafeez. He told me to go into the world that’s cracked and dying and get this kid out. He said, ‘You’ve been in those other worlds.’ Plural, and that I can move between them.”

  Silence on the other end. “Hafeez?”

  “No, no,” he says, almost muttering to himself. “That couldn’t be right. I mean, it just sounds a lot like…”

  “Like what?”

  “Um.” He pauses. “I mean. Well, this is going to sound weird.…”

  “Weirder than what I just told you?”

  “Okay, okay. It sounds like the multiverse.”

  “The what?”

  “You should pay better attention to the cooler aspects of science, you know that?”

  “I have trouble translating cool, sciencewise.”

  “This might be some real shit, Alicia. Some really, really real shit.”

  “Maybe I should go after my father. Maybe I should try to find him. My mom has to have some information on him, somewhere.”

  “Just wait. I’m coming over. My mom took the car to play Bunco with friends. I have to ride my bike.”

  “My mom’s going out. I could look around.” My mother doesn’t like me in her room. She’s always said that we each needed our own space. I haven’t been in her room in years, not since my last bad dream in the middle of the night. “I’m going to go dig around,” I say to Hafeez. I can hear him banging around on the other end. “I should go after my father. Shouldn’t I?” I stand up and hold the tool loosely. Outside it’s almost dark.

  “I’m running upstairs right now and I’m putting on my jacket,” Hafeez says. “Do you hear me, Alicia? I’m in my garage. I’m getting my bike.”

  “Hurry up,” I tell Hafeez.

  “I’m on my way.”

  I stand there. I haven’t even taken off my jacket. I’m just frozen, wondering what I should do. Where did they take my father? I can’t just let him go—not after all this time and not after what he’s just told me. It’s the smallest glimpse into something much bigger.

  What kind of gift is this strange object that seems to fit so perfectly in my hand?

  I know the answer other people would give me: it only means my father is crazy. This is only more proof. But that doesn’t work anymore. My father knew that Jax exists. It feels good to be bound in some way to Jax, but I wish I knew how we were bound and why.

  In the backyard, my father said, You ever get a feeling that there’s another version of yourself? A better version, maybe?

  And I told him to shut up. Why? Because I knew exactly what he meant. One of those versions of myself got shot while trying to save a little boy from drowning in that ship. Is that what my father wanted me to understand?

  I can’t trust Alex anymore. I’m not even sure I can trust my mother. Maybe my father really needs me. He told me I was in danger—to get out of here. I think about slamming down the stairs and out the door to look for him, but where would I even start?

  Could I really go after him?

  A ridge of pain burns along my sternum again. I feel the rising pressure in my chest and reach for the pill bottles in my coat pocket but remember my father stole them. I charge toward the drawer in my bedside table for more pills, then stop.

  No. My father said to stop masking the truth of who I am. Another spark of fire shoots through my chest. I straighten up, press my hands to my sternum, and fight for a breath.

  I walk out of my room and to the top of the stairs, wincing from the pain, and listen for my mother. I hear her getting her coat from the front closet, grabbing her keys. The front door shuts. The car rattles to a start in the driveway.

  I walk down the hall toward my mother’s room. It’s where she keeps all of her bills and papers. I wonder if there’s anything she kept, even just to remember my father, something that could be a clue to where he is now, or at least where he’s been.

  I turn the knob on her bedroom door. It’s locked, and suddenly I know what I want is in her room.

  The house is old. The doorknob has a small hole in the center of it. I once locked myself out of my own bedroom because I’d locked the door to let my hamster roam free. My mother picked the lock with a bobby pin.

  I run to the bathroom and yank open one of the drawers under the sink. Behind toothpaste, lotions, and brushes, there’s a jar of bobby pins. I pick one up and run back to her door.

  I kneel down and start fiddling. It takes longer than I expect, lots of blind twisting and clicking and then, finally, a little pop.

  I open the door.

  The room smells like her—lilac powder and hair spray. This is her private space. I feel like I’m betraying her trust just by walking in it, but my father isn’t the person she led me to believe he was. Isn’t that a betrayal, too? I feel guilty but also wronged.

  I can’t go after my father. But I can’t just let him go, either.

  The pain flares up my chest.

  I look at the window’s glassy panes growing dark, and I think of Jax in the decaying world at that camp with the quarantine sign. My father thinks I need him for some reason.

  I walk to my mother’s desk, cluttered with bills. I riffle through the stacks on top. I go through the top drawer, listening for any creak on the stairs.

  And then I feel the sharp edge of a box. I pull it out, flip open the lid, and there’s a stack of old envelopes, marked with red postal stamps, dating back years.

  They’re all stuffed with cash.

  It’s a lot of money.

  Years of it. I think of not being able to pay the heating bill or for swim lessons or T-ball dues. We had the money all along.

  All of the envelopes have the same return address in Jamaica Plain, a sticky label that you get from insurance company promotions.

  My chest feels like it’s caught fire. Is this where my father lives? Am I going after him? Is that the decision I have to make? I can barely breathe.

  I take the cash from a few envelopes in the back of the box and shove it in my wallet. It was for me, anyway; I tell myself this but I don’t feel convinced.

  I take one envelope too, so I have the address.

  Everything feels balanced on a knife edge. The pressure in my chest is explosive.

  I open one more drawer. It’s so light that
it opens easily—only one thing skids across the bottom of the drawer. And I know it’s a gun before I even see it clearly.

  My mother has a gun? Is it because of the break-ins on this street? An older woman was raped just one block over this summer. Or was my mother really afraid of my father?

  I think about reaching for it. Maybe, if I really go after my father, I’ll need it. But I know nothing about guns. I don’t even know how to check if it’s loaded.

  The pain’s so fierce that I grunt each breath.

  I could close the drawer with the gun still in it and walk back to my bedroom, take a pill, and lie back on my bed and be the person I’ve always been. Part of me wants to believe my mother, wants to go back to my life. Hallucinations are something I understand. My father being someone who gave up on us, who ran off, who’s not right in the head is something I’ve learned to accept. I can pretend none of this happened. I can turn back right now and live the life I’ve always known.

  Or I could take the gun and shove it deep into my jacket pocket with some of the cash, walk down the stairs, out the door. I can leave here and try to find my father, figure out who I really am, not the story that’s been handed over.

  The ripping sensation in my chest is so sharp and searing it feels almost surgical. My vision tightens on the specks of dust rotating in the fading light.

  My mother’s bedposts tilt. A mirror on the far wall ripples as if it were made of water.

  I reach for the bedside table but miss and hit the small round box that holds my mother’s lilac powder.

  The box falls.

  It seems to fall and fall and finally it hits the wood floor.

  An explosion of white.

  A powdery blizzard rising, drifting.

  Snow, a storm of it.

  My eyes lock onto the fine powdery flecks of my mother’s powder spinning in the gray light from the windows, as I think: Take the gun and go? Or put it back and stay?

  With shoes snow-dusted with my mother’s powder, I reach for the gun, and in that moment my vision doubles, my chest convulses, and then it’s as if I’m tearing from deep within, a shuddering I want to bear down on, but I have no leverage, can’t scream, can’t breathe.