Steve Toltz - A Fraction of the Whole

“I only came to pick up Dad. I’m taking him back overseas.”

“Where?”

“ Paris.”

I drew my name on the ground with a stick. Martin Dean. Little clumps of earth lay in brown piles around it.

“Have you heard from him?” she asked.

“No.”

“He’s going to get himself killed.”

“That seems likely.”

Next to my name I wrote her name in the dirt. Our names were lying side by side.

“He’s doing something important,” she said.

“He’s a murderer.”

“But he believes.”

“So?”

“So nothing. He believes in something, that’s all.”

“Rapists and pedophiles believe in something too. Hitler believed in something. Every time Henry the Eighth cut off another wife’s head, he believed in something. It’s not hard to believe in something. Everyone believes in something.”

“You don’t.”

“No, I don’t.”

The words had left my mouth before I realized what I’d said. On reflection, I could see that this was absolutely true. I couldn’t name a single thing I believed in. For me, 1 percent of doubt has the same effect as 100 percent. So then, how could I believe in anything when what might not be true might as well not be true?

I drew a heart around our names in the dirt.

“If you’d heard from Terry, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

I quickly covered our names with dirt. I was being foolish. She didn’t love me. She loved him. I suddenly flushed with embarrassment.

“You’ve heard from him.”

She grabbed my wrist, but I jerked it away from her.

“I haven’t.”

“Yes, you have!”

“I haven’t, I tell you!”

She pulled me toward her and grabbed my face with both hands and gave me a long, long kiss on the lips. She pulled away, leaving me stunned and speechless. I couldn’t open my eyes.

“If you see Terry, give him that for me.”

That opened my eyes. I smiled to stop myself foaming at the mouth. I hated her. I wanted to throw her in the dirt. I said something like “I hate you and will hate you for all remembered time” and walked away, toward home, even though home was the last place I wanted to go. It had transformed into a place of minor historical importance, like the restaurant toilet Hitler used before the Reichstag fire, and thus the reporters were back with their bad manners and zero empathy, shouting their inane questions through the front windows.

When I got home, it became clear that my father had had enough. He was standing at the door, swaying on his feet, drunk. His face was stiff, as if he had lockjaw.

“You want to come in, you cunts? Well, come in!” he shouted.

The reporters looked at each other before stepping tentatively into the house. They thought it was a trap. It wasn’t. It was merely a man teetering off the precipice of his sanity.

“Here. Take a shot of this,” my father said, opening the kitchen cupboards. He ripped up the floorboards. He led them into our bedroom. He shoved a pair of Terry’s underpants under their noses. “Sniff it! Sniff it!” He turned everything inside out. “You need to see where he originated from.” My father unbuttoned his fly, pulled out his penis, and waved it around. “Here, you maggots! He was a delinquent sperm! Beat the other sperms to the egg! He came out of here! Film it! Film it, you grubby parasites!” The reporters laughed while my mother chased them around the house. But they didn’t want to leave. They were having a high old time doubled over in laughter. This man’s drunken maudlin despair was the best thing they’d seen in ages. Couldn’t they see my mother crying? Oh yes, they could see it all right; they could see it through the zoom lens.

Once we got them back out onto the front lawn, I tried talking reasonably with them.

“Please go home,” I pleaded.

“Where’s your brother?” they asked.

“There he is!” I shouted, pointing behind them. They spun their heads around like fools. When they turned back to me I said, “Made you look.”

A petty victory.

I hadn’t lied to Caroline. All this time I’d had no word from Terry or Harry and I still hadn’t managed to get myself over to the suburban hideout. I felt cut off, and my natural curiosity was burning steadily inside me. I was sick of relying on unreliable newspaper reports and talk-back gossip. I wanted the inside scoop. I suppose there was also a part of me that wanted to join in somehow, if not in the actual killing, then at least as a witness. Everything that happened in Terry’s life up to this point had included me in one way or another. I wanted back in. I knew that the moment I stepped into his world, my life would be altered forever.

And I was right.

It was time to try again. I couldn’t assume the police had tired of watching me. I spent the afternoon threading a labyrinthine trail through the bush, then I made my way on foot across a wide, empty clearing, spinning around to check behind me every few minutes. Nothing. Nobody there. Just to be safe, I walked the five miles to the next town and caught the bus from there.

I was surprised to see that the front lawn of the suburban hideout was no longer immaculately groomed. The station wagon in the driveway was gone. The blinds were drawn. It looked as if the nice normal family they’d been emulating had fallen on hard times.

The door opened as soon as I turned up the driveway. Harry must have been watching from the window.

“Quick! In! In!”

I hurried inside, and Harry dead-bolted the door behind me.

“Is he here?” I asked.

“No, he’s fucking not, and he’d better not set foot within my periphery if he doesn’t want a bullet in the head!”

I followed Harry into the living room, where he flopped down on the sofa. I flopped too. “Marty, your brother is an attention-grabber. I can’t stop him. The cooperative is in ruins! It’s a shambles! My dream! The whole thing’s a downright failure. Terry’s fucked it. He wants to be famous, doesn’t he? He’s turned his back on all my advice. I thought he was like a son to me. But no son of mine would piss in my face like that. I mean, I don’t have children, but when you have kids you don’t expect a golden shower! The first couple of years, sure, but after that you let down your guard. And look at what he’s blown it all for! He’s attacking sportsmen, football players, bookies! He’s not even robbing them, he’s just ripping them apart for no reason! Where the hell’s the money in that? And you know what else? Have you seen the papers? The world thinks it’s his gang! Not mine, his. Well, it’s not his. It’s mine! Mine, dammit! OK, sure I wanted us to be anonymous, but we all have to be anonymous, and if we can’t, then I want the credit I deserve! Now it’s too late. He’s casting a shadow over me. And crims I’ve known for fifty years think I’m working for him! How’s that for a slap in the face? It’s humiliating! But I’ve got a plan. I need your help. Come in here, I want to show you something.”

Harry got to his feet and limped off in the direction of his bedroom. I followed him in. This was the first time I’d been in Harry’s bedroom. Other than his bed, there was nothing in it. Nothing at all. He was anonymous even in his own room.

He reached under his mattress and pulled out a thick wad of paper.

“I thought just maybe the anonymous democratic cooperative of crime might be a unique gift to give to the world. But now I see it was doomed from the start. It was never going to work. You can’t help human nature. People think they need limelight to grow. No one can stand anonymity. So here’s Plan B, a backup I’ve been working on for ten years. It’s something that’s never been done. No one’s ever thought of it. This is going to be my legacy. This is it, Marty. But I need help. I can’t do it on my own. That’s where you come in.”