Exley, p.18
Exley, page 18
“My dad isn’t here,” I said.
“Apparently not,” the guy said. He pushed the bucket past me and out into the hall.
When he was gone, I sat down in the chair, next to the bed, like I normally did. I took the book off the table. Then I waited. I didn’t know what else to do. I just sat there, waiting for my dad to come back, wondering where he could be. Maybe they’d moved him to the second floor. I liked that idea because that would mean he’d maybe gotten better and could at least talk or something. But if so, why was his book still in the room? Did that mean he’d gone somewhere but was coming back? But where had he gone? Had he gone somewhere so someone could fix him? And what was wrong with him anyway? It was scary having all these questions and no one around to answer them. It was even scarier that there might be someone around to answer them if I could just make myself go and find them and ask the questions. But I couldn’t. I felt like something in my mind was running and running and I couldn’t make it stop.
So I started talking to my dad, even though he wasn’t there. I did this all the time when he was in Iraq. Whenever my mind wouldn’t stop thinking about what he was doing right now, whether he was OK, why he was there in the first place, why I hadn’t heard from him, I’d talk to him, just tell him about my day, and by the end I’d feel a little better, maybe because I could picture him, in Iraq, talking to me the way I was talking to him.
Anyway, that’s what I did in my dad’s empty hospital room: I talked to him, like he was there. I told him about the guy out in front of the Crystal and how he’d hit Harold, and about Mr. D. and the guys in the Crystal and V. and his dad, and about how I’d shot Petey and how it felt bad shooting him the first time and how it felt even worse the second time, because I was so mad I felt like I could keep shooting and shooting and it wouldn’t be my fault, and how I’d never shoot anyone again, because I was pretty sure my dad wouldn’t want me to be the kind of guy who would shoot anyone. But was I right about that? “I’m pretty confused,” I told him. “I wish you were here to tell me what kind of guy you want me to be.” But anyway, I told him that whatever his feelings were about me shooting someone, it was OK if he (my dad) had already done it himself, especially if he’d shot the guy who’d shot him—if someone had shot him, that is. And then I went on and mentioned to my dad how V.’s father and V. knew him and called him a crazy bastard, which I was pretty sure they meant in a good way, and also how V.’s father told me I sounded like Exley, and how K. did, too, even though it didn’t seem to matter that much. “It’s just confusing, Dad,” I told him. “She liked me, but now she doesn’t anymore, I don’t think.” I told him about Mother, how I thought I was hearing her talk at night and how she still wouldn’t admit he’d gone to Iraq and come back. “Otherwise she’s like always,” I said. “I know she misses you.” I didn’t know that, but sometimes when you’re talking to someone who’s not there, you have to lie to him like he was. Especially if you then tell him something true. “I wish you hadn’t left us, Dad. Everything is so messed up now. It’s ten at night and I’m talking to your hospital bed but you’re not in the bed and I need to know where you are. I need to talk to you.”
“Who are you?” someone said from behind me.
“What the . . . ?” I said, and turned around. There was a woman standing in the doorway. She wasn’t Mrs. C., the woman who was usually at the front desk, but she was dressed like her: she was wearing a shirt with cartoon characters, and blue hospital pants and blue hospital clogs, and she was holding a clipboard. “I’m Miller Le Ray,” I said. “I was just talking to my dad.”
“Your dad?” she said, and then looked at the empty bed, then at her clipboard. “He should still be in surgery.”
“Surgery?” I said. “What kind of surgery?” But I could tell already that the nurse regretted telling me even the little she’d told me. She wagged the clipboard in my direction, just to let me know that she was the one who decided who was allowed to know what and when.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she said.
“But he’s my dad,” I said. “What kind of surgery is he having?”
“How did you even get in here?” she said. “Does your mother even know you’re here?”
I could immediately see Mother’s face as she got the phone call from the hospital at ______ o’clock at night. I could hear the nurse asking her if she knew that her son was in the hospital, and I could hear Mother saying, No, he isn’t, he’s in bed. And then I could picture Mother getting up and going to my bedroom to make sure I really was in bed. And then I just started running—past the nurse, out of the hospital, back home, into my bedroom, out of my clothes, into my pajamas, and into bed. It happened so fast that I began to wonder if I’d really gone to the VA hospital at all or if I’d just gone there in my head. My head, after all, was the thing that always got me into trouble. Mother told me so. I looked to my right. There was the empty plate on the end table. There were some crumbs on it. So I knew I hadn’t imagined or dreamed the BLT. Then I smelled my hand, the one I’d used to touch the hospital floor. It didn’t smell like a hand that had been dipped into a puddle on a hospital floor; it just smelled like a hand. Then I thought about what had happened at the hospital, or what I’d imagined happening at the hospital. It didn’t seem possible that I could just buzz my way into the hospital and then walk into my dad’s room without anyone stopping me. And it also didn’t seem possible that the nurse would let me, or I’d let myself, leave the hospital without finding out what had happened to my dad. And if something doesn’t seem possible, then it usually isn’t. I felt much better then, because I knew that the whole thing had been a dream and that my dad had just gone into surgery in my head and not in the hospital. Still, I also knew that I’d wake up tomorrow and wonder again if the whole thing had actually happened. So I got up out of bed, crept downstairs, opened the window seat, took out my journal, and wrote down everything that really had happened since I’d written in the journal earlier that night, and then everything that had only happened in my head, just so I’d know the difference between the two. When I was done, I put the journal back in the window seat. It felt wrong in there, like something had been messed with, but it was dark and I couldn’t see and just then I heard Mother mumbling, and so I closed the window seat and went back to my room and told myself that I was probably wrong about the window seat, and if I wasn’t, then I’d “deal” with it in the morning.
Letter 3
Dear Miller,
I’m not going to lie to you, bud: I’m so ______. I’m so, so ______. I can’t even think of anything else to say in this letter. All of the other guys here in ______ are writing letters home saying that everything is fine, don’t worry, everything is fine, I’ll be home soon. I wrote a couple of those letters, too. You got them, right? I hope you got them. I don’t even know if you got them. You probably didn’t even get them. You probably think I’m a horrible dad for not writing you. Or you got the letters but haven’t written me back because you think I’m a horrible dad. Because either way, I haven’t heard from you in a long, long time. That’s another thing I’m so ______ about.
It’s like something is in my mind and I can’t get it out of there, not even for a little while. Even reading A Fan’s Notes doesn’t help me, bud. I tried to give my copy to ______, but he just laughed and said, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” So I just threw it away. I can’t even get my mind clear enough to feel sad about that, or happy, or anything.
I know I shouldn’t be saying this, bud. But I don’t know what else to say: I’m so ______. I’m so ______ that I’m going to ______. I don’t want to be here anymore. I keep walking around telling people—______, ______, even ______ —that I don’t want to be here anymore, and they laugh at me. They say, “No ______.” But they don’t understand. I want to come home. I want to come home, Miller. Even if your mom doesn’t want me home. Even if you don’t want me home, either. Even if there isn’t anything there for me to come home to. I don’t think I can take it here anymore. I want to come home.
Love, Your dad
Doctor’s Notes (Entry 19, Part 1)
I reread the three letters several times in an attempt to determine their authenticity. On the one hand, they look the same as the first letter M. showed me ______ weeks ago: they are on the same plain white paper, in the same style, written by the same hand with the same penmanship. If that letter was a fake—and I was certain it was—then these letters must be fraudulent as well. But if these letters are fakes, then why do they refer to letters M. has and has not written to his father—letters that, if these three letters are fake, cannot and do not exist? If M. has written the letters, then why do they tell M. not to think about K. and not to teach M.’s father’s class, when clearly M. has no intention of following these orders? If M. has written the letters, then why do they make so many obviously “nudge-nudge, wink-wink” exclamatory allusions to M.’s reading a book M. insists he has not read? Are these letters real, then? Or are they the most expertly conceived frauds? Or are they the most amateurishly conceived frauds? I struggle with this for a while until I remember I’m dealing with M., who has already shown he’s inclined toward the fraudulent. And besides, as I know as well as the next mental health professional, children are capable of seeming expert one moment and amateurish the next. With that in mind, it seems clear enough that the letters are fake. But whether they are or they aren’t, why were they in M.’s mother’s possession, and not M.’s?
Just then the phone rings. I know it is M.’s mother. How serendipitous, I think, I shall ask her myself why the letters were on her dresser and not M.’s. But then I realize I cannot! I cannot ask her about the letters without revealing to her that I have read the letters. Because I cannot reveal to her that I have read the letters without also revealing to her that I broke into her house and rifled through her dresser drawers and stole the letters, inadvertently, and the newspaper clipping, advertently. Because I cannot reveal all those things and still have her speak to me the way I want her to speak to me. Because I’d rather hear her lovely whisper than hear the truth behind the letters that were in her drawer and that are now in my hands. And I wonder: Is this true love? When people talk about true love, do they mean a love that enables you to endure the truth, or a love that makes you ignore it?
“Hello,” M.’s mother whispers, and with that whisper the letters disappear from my brain, if not from my possession.
“I was just thinking about you,” I say.
“Really?” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “Really.” Fortunately for me, we are on the phone, and she can’t see my smile, can’t see how pleased with myself I am. I’ve never been at all proficient at “playful banter” until now.
I hear M.’s mother sip on something, hear the clink of ice cubes against glass. Normally, I am against the consumption of alcohol—against and, indeed, opposed to it—but I am prepared to have an open mind where drinking and M.’s mother are concerned. I am prepared to love it if she loves it, or if it makes her love me. I hear her sip again, then sigh. “Everything OK?” I ask.
“M. and I went out for M.’s birthday dinner,” she says.
“Where?”
“The Crystal,” she says.
I think immediately of seeing M. outside the Crystal this morning, seeing him kick the man on the sidewalk, etc. And then I think of all the things—true and untrue—that I’ve learned about M. by reading his journal. And then I think of his fraudulent letters, and I think I should tell his mother about them, all of them. But I cannot, because in telling her about the former, I will have to admit I did nothing to stop him. And about the latter, I will have to admit that I broke into their house. Suddenly I feel tired, bloated, and disgusted with deceit, and when I say, “Oh,” M.’s mother must hear something of that in my voice, because she says, “I know. But it’s M.’s favorite place. We always go there for his birthday.” Her voice suddenly sounds distracted and far away.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” I ask. She does: she tells me about how she and M. were having a good time until he “freaked out,” and then she describes the freak-out. “I’m so glad you’ll be seeing him tomorrow,” she says. “I really do think you’re helping him.”
“I think I’m helping him, too,” I say. But then I picture M. standing in the college classroom by himself, and I wonder if I really am helping him. I wonder if a better mental health professional would have ignored the security guard and walked into the classroom and demanded M. admit that whoever K. was, she wasn’t his student, because he wasn’t teaching a class. I wonder if a better mental health professional would be sneaking around his patient’s house and wooing his patient’s mother. I wonder if a better mental health professional would be telling his patient’s mother about what he’d found out about her son. I wonder if a better mental health professional would be talking to his patient’s mother at all. But the thought of not speaking to M.’s mother at all is too much: my brain—my brain and, indeed, my mind—can’t handle the thought, and I blurt out, “Did your husband really teach at Jefferson County Community College?”
“Why?”
“M. says he did,” I say. “It might be easier to know what M. is making up if I know what he isn’t.”
M.’s mother sighs again. “M. might really think his dad was an English professor,” she says. “For that matter, his dad might have thought he was an English professor, too, after telling me for so long that he was one.”
“But he wasn’t,” I say.
“No,” M.’s mother says. “Instead of teaching a class every Tuesday, he was . . .” And here she pauses for a moment. Clearly M.’s mother won’t, or can’t, finish her thought. Fortunately, one of the main tasks of the mental health professional is to finish his patients’ thoughts for them, even when, as is the case with M.’s mother, they are not my patients.
“Out conducting an extramarital affair,” I say at the same time that M.’s mother says, “Out drinking beer with his buddies.”
“Did M. tell you that?” M.’s mother asks. “That his dad was having an affair?”
“In so many words,” I say.
“Oh Jesus,” M.’s mother says, her voice quivering. After that, she is quiet for a long time, except for the regular clinking and sipping of her alcoholic drink. I wonder what she’s thinking. I wonder if she’s thinking what I’m thinking: that it’s a terrible thing for a son to know the truth about his father; that it’s a terrible thing for a wife to have to know the truth about her husband; that it’s a lucky thing for a mother and a son to have another man around to be a father and husband figure, if that’s what they want him to be.
“I’m so tired,” M.’s mother finally says. That’s how I know that this part of the conversation is over. But I don’t yet know what the next part of the conversation is or how to begin it. All I know is that I don’t want the conversation to end. All I know is that I want to keep talking to her tonight, and tomorrow night, too. Except tomorrow night M.’s mother is giving her own talk.
“Would you like me to come to your lecture tomorrow night?” I ask.
“That’s sweet of you,” M.’s mother says. “But I don’t think so.”
“Oh,” I say. Perhaps she can hear my woundedness, because she rushes to reassure me.
“It’s just that it’s been so easy to talk to you on the phone,” she says. “We’re going to see each other in two nights anyway, right? I’d just love to be able to talk on the phone until then. Is that OK?”
I tell her it is. “Will you call me tomorrow night after your talk?” I ask, and she says she will. She does sound tired, and so I suggest we hang up and talk again tomorrow night.
“Hey, you’re not mad at me, are you?” she says, and I tell her I’m not. Because I do know what she means. I want to tell her that. I want to tell her that I was lonely before I started talking to her on the phone, and now I don’t feel lonely anymore. When we stop talking on the phone and start “seeing” each other (in the ocular sense), will something go wrong and will I start feeling lonely again? As she says, we will see each other soon enough; until then, we should talk on the phone. M.’s mother is right: it’s so easy to talk on the phone.
“Good luck tomorrow night,” I say. “I’ll be thinking of you.”
“Thank you,” she says. Her voice sounds happier, but also frantic. I’ve heard this shift in tone before: my patients sound this way when they’re depressed but frantically trying to convince me and themselves that they’re not depressed. “And I really am looking forward to your talk!” She asks what she should wear to the gala, and I tell her that I’m sure she’ll look beautiful in whatever she wears. “That’s so sweet,” she says, which I take to mean I’ve said the right thing. “But what do the other women wear?” she asks. “Other women?” I say. Because the NCMHP is, frankly, mostly male—mostly male and, indeed, male dominated—and most of the males either don’t have spouses or partners, or choose not to be seen with them in public. There are two female mental health professionals in the NCMHP; they are former nuns and tend to wear long black jumpers made out of an indeterminate fabric. I tell all this to M.’s mother. “Oh,” she says, which I take to mean I’ve said the wrong thing. I hasten to get off the phone before I say anything else.
After we hang up, I start reading A Fan’s Notes from where I left off, in the middle of chapter 4, “Onhava Regained and Lost Again.” Because while I have solved some of the mysteries surrounding M. and his family, some mysteries remain. Perhaps the book doesn’t have all the answers. But that does not mean it doesn’t have some of them.
