Nonentity (5 page)

“They have been close to her, which is why they don’t want a damn thing to do with her. She’s poison. Let’s go.”

“I’m staying right where I am,” he said. “There are at least a dozen more beers in this place waiting for me to pound them.”

“There are other bars, you know. They’d be happy to serve you whatever you like.”

“Maybe so, but Bruce gives me a discount. Can you imagine if I had to pay full price for all the shit I drink? I’d have to take out a loan.”

“Suit yourself,” I said.

I deserted him, heading to the front door. Just as I opened it …

A blue blur blanked my vision. The familiar mix of Gregorian chant and psychedelia returned with ear-shattering magnitude. I passed out.

I awoke in the dusty armchair in my apartment’s living room. Just a dream? I wondered. The tavern had appeared authentic. But how could it have been?

A week later I mentioned the strange episode to Cranston Gage, specifically my discussion with the inebriated Lawrence Alister. Cranston was incredulous: “But Sebastian, I knew Alister. He’s been dead for about two months now.”

****

The voice on the other end was direct and bloodless: “I’m sorry to inform you of this, Mr. Flemming. Your father is dead.”

I was twenty-five-years-old, lying in bed next to a sleeping woman whose name would thereafter elude me. It was nine years before I met Lorna. The caller was a male cop.

I struggled to respond. “What happened?”

“We’re not sure, Mr. Flemming. He was found on a street not far from his home, an apparent gunshot victim.”

The phone fell from my hand. From the receiver on the floor: “Mr. Flemming…. Mr. Flemming…. Are you still there?... Hey, what the hell?” The cop hung up.

It was seven-plus years since I had moved out of my parents’ house. My family and I could not have been more distant. I had always disregarded Hagen and he was nowhere to be found anyway. My pathetic relationship with my mother was on life support. I had occasionally spoken with my father by phone, but even that bond had loosened.

I learned of my father’s death while on location about 150 miles from my parents’ residence. I was helping to shoot a bullshit documentary about the government’s environmental policies for the Agency of Internal Degradation (AID).

Preferable filmmaking work had been scarce a few years earlier when I had completed film school. So I took a job with the cinematic division of AID. I tried to do some freelancing. Nobody wanted to fund my projects. I thought that my material demonstrated fine skills and marketable ideas; the deep pockets in the media business thought otherwise. “We like you, kid,” they would say, “but the money just ain’t there.” Such rejections sounded plausible. As the years passed, I suspected that my name was against me. My father cast a sizeable shadow that scared people and likely raised doubts about his offspring. Was my lack of nongovernmental work due to an informal blacklisting?

My involvement with the environmental documentary ended abruptly. AID had already postponed the project’s deadline four or five times and could not afford to do so again. The agency brought somebody else in to finish the assignment. Because I had recently submitted a job application that I expected the Ministry of Miscommunication and Misdirection to accept, I no longer cared about my status with AID. Triple-M offered greater opportunities for filmmaking. I did not foresee that Triple-M would become my ultimate dead-end.

A return home over nine months after my most recent visit would have been unappealing under normal circumstances. In the wake of a tragedy, it was brutal. I had little stomach for the dreadful scene I anticipated.

I arrived at the house on a cool afternoon, approximately thirty hours after authorities had discovered my father’s lifeless body. Fifty or sixty people milled around in the front yard. While parking on the overcrowded street, I fought an urge to get the hell out of there. What need did I have for all that commotion? Besides, my mother and I had no connection. What consolation could I offer her? She would be better off crying on the shoulders of friends and neighbors. I stewed in my car for about ten minutes before heading in.

Getting through the front door was an ordeal. People shuffled in and out in such numbers that I had to gingerly wiggle through. Several men wearing “PR Police” badges carried boxes from my father’s study to a van outside. A man in the living room directed that traffic. He was short and mustachioed, wearing a fedora and a bright yellow bowtie, smoking a cigarette.

“Sir, if you don’t mind my asking,” I said to the man, “what the hell is going on here? Why are you fellows confiscating all these boxes?”

Without looking at me, he said, “State’s evidence.”

“Really? May I ask what makes that stuff evidence?”

“You may not.”

“A lot of those files are confidential. They’re protected by attorney-client privilege.”

“Attorney-client privilege?” the man said with a smirk, still not looking at me. “Where have you been the last ten years? Those rules have changed. A crime has been committed. It’s our duty to collect all pertinent information. Hey, wait a minute. Why the hell am I talking to you?” The man finally eyed me. He took a disgruntled drag off his cigarette.

“You’re talking to me because I’m Sebastian R. Flemming the Third, the son of the victim of the crime you’re investigating. This doesn’t look like a reasonable investigation. It’s more like a flagrant infringement of privacy rights.”

“Can you just let me do my job? Move it along please.”

“Fine. I need to find my mother. Do you know where she is?”

“Who?”

“Jillian Flemming, the victim’s wife. Any idea where I might locate her?”

The man dropped his cigarette and rubbed it out on my parents’ hardwood floor. “How the hell should I know? She’s probably in the kitchen.”

“Thanks a lot. You’ve been a delight.”

Heading through the fancy dining room, I dodged a growing crowd. So stuffed was the kitchen that it took me more than a minute to reach the little breakfast table in the back. Shattered beyond recognition was the room’s casual ambience.

My mother sat at the table, her face peeking out from a white blanket. She looked old, a freshly formed wrinkle or two accompanying bags under her eyes. Her listless stare beckoned me to run.

I instead forced myself to acknowledge her. “Mother, it’s me.”

“Who?” Her gaze remained vacant.

“It’s Sebastian.”

“Sebastian,” she groaned.

Just then a neighbor lady came to me and said, “Hello, Sebastian. I am so sorry for your loss. Did you just get in?”

“A short while ago. I’m trying to speak with my mother.”

“Oh, you won’t have much luck with that. She’s been in shock ever since she learned of the horrible incident. Sebastian, my heart goes out to the both of you.”

“Sebastian,” my mother groaned again.

Several other neighbors – some I remembered, some I didn’t – soon approached and distracted me. My mother kept groaning my name every thirty seconds or so. I had an eerie impression that she was not addressing me. She was voicing my father’s name.

The surroundings were too chaotic. I took a walk outside. Upon returning, I tried to get information about my father’s death. A female officer waved my inquiries away: “Sir, we wouldn’t need to conduct an investigation if we already knew what happened. Don’t be a hindrance.” That lack of sympathy epitomized the cops. In addition to their inability (or unwillingness) to tell me anything, they insisted upon maintaining indefinite custody of my father’s body. “State’s evidence,” they said. I suspected something fishier.

Some family friends and colleagues of my father’s organized a funeral ceremony that occurred three days after my return home. The service dragged on longer than I wished. Sitting next to my mother unnerved me. She appeared oblivious to everything around her. I just wanted to get away from her. So I took off about an hour after the funeral ended, traveling several hours back to my apartment. I hoped that my mother’s condition would improve within a few weeks so I could guiltlessly wash my hands clean of her.

No such luck. She spiraled into an abyss with no exit. Years of agony had piled up and weakened her spirits. My father’s death was the catalytic event in a breakdown that likely traced as far back as her pregnancy with my brother. She committed herself to a mental institution about two months after the mysterious death. A day after my mother’s admission to the psych hospital, a nurse called to notify me. Poor timing: two days earlier, Triple-M had offered me a position. They wanted me to start immediately. I could ill afford the hassle of a mental patient, even if it was the woman who birthed me.

I went to the mental facility two days later. A late morning chill blew against me as I walked through the parking lot to the hospital. The wind’s bitterness echoed my unease.

Jillian Flemming resided in Room 314. My arrival there startled me. A familiar man sat at my mother’s bedside, reading to her. He wore glasses. His brown hair was neatly combed. His voice was soothing. Neither he nor my barely lucid mother noticed me as I stood in the doorway, trying to determine this fellow’s identity.
Hagen
, I finally realized. That long-lost wreaker of havoc and brother I had nearly forgotten – Hagen.

He looked up from what he was reading. Our eyes met. An odd smile formed on his lips.

“Sebastian,” he said. “My God. Sebastian.”

“Sebastian,” my mother groaned.

I said to Hagen, “‘My God’ is right. What hole in the universe did you crawl out of?”

He laughed. “An understandable reaction.”

I stared at him blankly.

“Perhaps you remember me, Sebastian. I am still your brother.”

“Sebastian,” my mother groaned.

“A brother by blood and little else,” I said.

“I can’t blame you for thinking that. It’s been a lot of years. I, uh, I missed too much. Like Dad’s funeral. I should have been there. It’s sad, you know, something to regret. But I’m here now. I really want to …”

“Hagen, let’s slow down for a minute. You were the last person I expected to see today. I’m not sure what to think.”

“How could you be? It’s completely out of the blue for me to show up like this. I’m sorry to take you by surprise. I’m sorry I didn’t give you a heads-up. I’m sorry I wasn’t here before. Oh God, Sebastian. I’m sorry for so much.”

“Sebastian,” my mother groaned.

“No sense apologizing to me,” I said. “You’re here now and that’s that. Whether it’s what Mom needs at this point, I don’t know.”

He nodded his head toward the door. “We should let her rest. Would it be alright if we continued this discussion in the hall?”

“Of course.”

As he and I left the room, I glanced back at my mother. Her vacant gaze troubled me. Did she understand that my brother/her son was back?

Standing in a sterile hallway with me, Hagen said, “By the way, you look like you’re doing fairly well for yourself. I’m glad to see that.”

“I’m not the one you should worry about. As you can surely tell, the woman in that room is so sick with grief that she doesn’t even know we’re here. If you’re trying to get redemption out of this, you may be setting yourself up for disappointment.”

“Disappointment I can handle. What I can’t handle is the fact that I’ve been as rotten a son as one can be. I admit to being motivated by guilt. Is that wrong?”

“Your motivations don’t matter to me. It’s the effect you might have on her that I’m concerned about. I don’t want this situation to get worse.”

Hagen said, “I’m with you on that. You have no reason to trust me.”

“What difference is it if I trust you or not? If that woman regains anything like normal clarity, she might look to her side and be stunned right back into a catatonic state when she sees that you’ve returned from what she believed was the grave.”

There was a pause. “Damn. I didn’t think of that.”

“Perhaps you should play it safe and visit her when she’s gotten better. That is, if she gets better. She may not, you know.”

Another pause followed. “I get where you’re coming from, man, but I just feel like I should be here. Who knows? Maybe she won’t be startled if she realizes that it’s me. Maybe it’ll help her recover. I have to have hope. All my days of being hopeless are behind me.”

It slowly dawned on me that this once-wayward brother was inadvertently offering me a huge favor. I did not want to tend to our mother. Just coming to the hospital was an inconvenience. I would start a new job soon. I was her son – but so what? She and I had hardly spoken over the preceding ten years. That Hagen had been even less present in her life was inconsequential. If he wanted to play the prodigal son, why should I interfere?

“You’re obviously sincere about this, Hagen. On second thought, I’d like you to stay. Mom would probably be overjoyed to find out that you’re alive.”

He thanked me and gave me a big hug I didn’t deserve. He thought that I was doing him a favor. I left the hospital, gambling that my brother would be an adequate caretaker and thereby allow me to shirk my own familial duties without guilt. That gamble would prove astute in the former case, painfully unsound in the latter.