Exley, p.5
Exley, page 5
“Good,” I said. “Where is it?”
Exley nodded again and opened his mouth to speak, but instead of words, a smell came out. It smelled like something had died in his mouth. The smell did all the talking for him, and what it said was that he wasn’t going to be able to tell me where his home was. But maybe, like a dog in a movie I once saw, he could show me the way home if I just got him out of the New Parrot. I couldn’t expect him to walk while I rode, though, and I couldn’t expect him to ride, either. And I didn’t think I could support both Exley and my bike. So I let him bring his vacuum cleaner. “Let’s go home,” I told him. He nodded and pushed the vacuum cleaner out the front door, out of the parking lot, and left, down the long, long hill into town. It’s working, I thought. I found Exley already and he’s leading me to his house, and as soon as he’s ready, I’ll lead him to my dad. It’s really working! But I should also say that even if it was working, it wasn’t working very fast: plenty of cars had time to pass us, turn around, and pass us again to make sure they’d seen us right the first time. I don’t blame them. We probably made quite a scene, me walking with my three-speed Huffy, Exley walking with his beat-up upright Hoover, making our slow way down Washington Street. If a book is made up of things that are hard to believe, then we were like something out of a book. Maybe, I thought, once I got Exley back into shape, he’d end up writing it.
Doctor’s Notes (Entry 4)
After three unproductive — unproductive and, indeed, counterproductive — meetings with M., I try a new approach and ask the patient if he has ideas as to how I might help him. M. considers this for several moments and then makes an odd request: that I become a different doctor, with a different name, a different manner of speaking and dressing. Even a different hairstyle. Even a beard. M. goes so far as to suggest — suggest and, indeed, encourage—specific things for me to say at certain moments during our meeting: when I first greet the patient, after the patient tells me his most innermost thoughts and fears, when I say good-bye to the patient, etc. Strangely, I agree. Possibly because M. is onto something. Possibly because normal strategies seem not to be working. Possibly because M. is right: possibly a change in doctoring is in order. Possibly Dr. Horatio Pahnee (the name M. has given me) will be able to heal M. whereas I have failed. In any case, I shall think of it as a study — a study and, indeed, a clinical study; if findings are satisfactory, I will present them during my speech at the North Country Mental Health Professionals’ annual meeting later this autumn.
After our meeting, I open the front door to let M. out. I am about to exclaim our newly agreed-upon good-bye when I see the patient’s mother sitting on the porch railing. I have not seen her since our first session, and my arm and arm hair tingle wildly. She and I exchange conventional greetings. She kisses her son on the top of the head and then asks him if he wouldn’t mind waiting in the car, just for a second. M. walks to the car; as he does so, he looks at me over his shoulder. I know how to read his look, and I look back, to tell him I will not betray his confidences. When he is in the car, M.’s mother asks, “How’s it going?”
“Not well,” I answer truthfully. I do not want to tell her the rest of the truth — that we’ve had something of a breakthrough today — because then she will ask for details about the breakthrough and I fear I will tell her.
“Oh,” she says. She looks sadly at the car. Her sadness seems genuine. This is not my area of expertise, exactly, but I believe her to be a good mother. I almost touch her on the arm as she touched me on the arm, to console her. But I fear that my touch won’t tingle her arm as hers tingled mine, and how unbearably sad that would be. She looks back at me. She is still sad about M. Sad, she is still beautiful. “Do you think there’s anything else you could do?” she asks.
“Such as?” I ask. I genuinely want to know. Please help me, I almost say but don’t, as it would be unprofessional in a mental health professional.
“You’ve already read . . .” And she names the book with which M.’s father was obsessed, causing, I believe, his son’s obsession, although M. claims not even to have read the book, let alone be obsessed with it. I glanced at the first chapter, and so I know the book is of local origin. Or at least the author is “from around here” (I myself am from Rochester, a veritable metropolis when compared to Watertown). But other than that, I haven’t read the book. I almost tell M.’s mother that and then suggest she read my article in the official proceedings from last year’s North Country Mental Health Professionals’ meeting, which suggests that whereas in the past, people turned to literature to improve their lives, they now turn to their mental health professionals. But clearly she expects me already to have read the book, especially since she gave me a copy of the book after M.’s last session. So I say, “I have read the book.” I try to make my voice as noncommittal as possible, but M.’s mother hears something in it — perhaps what she wants to hear — and says, “I know, it’s awful.” M.’s mother sighs, through her nose, and it sounds light and musical. It is my professional opinion that mental health professionals should never, ever use the word “crazy” to describe their patients, or anyone else for that matter. But it occurs to me that M.’s father must be crazy — crazy and, indeed, insane — to leave someone like M.’s mother. “I worry so much about M.,” she says. “Do you have any other ideas?”
“I have a few ideas,” I say, again noncommittally. M.’s mother waits, I believe for me to list the ideas. When I do not, she says: “Well, do you think you should follow M. or something?”
“Follow him?” I say. I try not to sound offended, although I am. Because I don’t want M.’s mother to think I’m a man who is easily offended. Unless she likes men, or mental health professionals, who are easily offended. “I am a mental health professional, not a private detective.”
M.’s mother doesn’t reply. She just looks at me with her deep, deep black eyes. M. has described to me these eyes and their effect. I believe that M.’s mother respects me for standing my professional ground. I also believe that I will end up being a private detective, if that’s what M.’s mother really wants me to be.
The Woman Who Was Definitely Not My Mother
About halfway down the Washington Street hill a pickup truck pulled over to the shoulder and stopped in front of Exley and me. The driver’s-side door opened and an Indian got out. I don’t mean an American Indian; I mean an Indian from India. I’d seen an Indian before, of course, and of course I’d also seen a pickup truck, but I don’t think I’d ever seen an Indian driving a pickup truck. Maybe that’s why I just stood there like a doofus, staring at the Indian, who was staring at Exley, but not like a doofus.
“Where do you think you’re goin’ with my vacuum cleaner?” he finally said. He didn’t have an Indian accent, either; he sounded like most any white guy from Watertown. He sounded a little like Exley would probably sound once he started talking again. But for now, Exley still wasn’t talking, not to me, and he didn’t answer the Indian’s question, either: he just put his head down and leaned a little more heavily on his vacuum cleaner.
“I’m taking him home,” I said.
“That’s fine,” the Indian said to me. “But the vacuum cleaner comes back with me to the motel. And if he wants to keep his job, he needs to come with me, too. If he doesn’t, he can go home with you. Entirely up to him.” The Indian took a step closer to Exley and said to him, in a louder voice, “You understand me, S.?”
“S.?” I said, a bad feeling bubbling up from my stomach and into my throat. “His name’s not S. It’s Exley.” But neither of them seemed to hear me. The Indian turned and walked back toward his truck, and the guy who I’d been thinking was Exley but who was apparently just a guy named S. followed him, still pushing his vacuum cleaner. “Don’t go,” I whispered to S. What I really meant was, Don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to my dad. Don’t be S. Be Exley. But S. probably knew what everyone knows: that the only time you say “Don’t go” to someone is if it’s too late and he’s already gone. Anyway, he went; he didn’t even look at me to say good-bye or apologize with his eyes for letting me think he was one guy when in fact he was another. When they got to the truck, the Indian took the vacuum cleaner away from him and chucked it into the bed of the truck. S. staggered around the truck and got in the passenger’s side. The Indian got in the driver’s side. His window was open; unlike S., he looked at me one last time, like he expected me to say something. I was so mad at him because he’d turned Exley back into S. and he’d done it so fast, without seeming to care at all about what it would do to me or my dad, and so I said, “I’ve never seen an Indian drive a pickup truck.”
“I’m from Pakistan, dude,” he said. “Or at least my parents are.” And then he started the truck, hung a U-turn, and headed back up Washington Street, toward the New Parrot. I watched them until they crested the hill and were gone. I was sad, of course, that S. was S. and not Exley. But I shouldn’t have been. Because it was my fault for really believing I’d found Exley so easily. I should have known better. Like I should have known finding Exley wasn’t going to be easy and would take more time than I wanted it to. That made me sad, of course. But I was also still pretty excited, because my dad was home, and even if he was sick, I had a plan to help him get better. Just because S. wasn’t Exley didn’t mean that Exley wasn’t out there, waiting for me to find him. Just because the plan hadn’t worked yet didn’t mean it wouldn’t work ever. In other words, I was part let down and part jazzed up. And when you’re a boy and you’re part let down and part jazzed up, you do one of two things: you go see your mother, or you go see a woman who is definitely not your mother. I decided to go see a woman who was definitely not my mother.
HER NAME WAS K. She was a student in my dad’s class, which I was teaching for my dad until he got back from Iraq. Every Tuesday night I took attendance, gave the students an A for attending or an F for not, and then let them go. K.’s was one of the names I’d called. Apparently, she liked the way I called it. She lived going out of town toward JCCC. About three miles from where I’d left Exley. It was getting cold; by the time I biked there, my nose was running, and I wiped it with my sleeve, just like Mother always told me not to. Funny. I never could stop thinking about Mother whenever I was with K., maybe because they were about the same age.
I climbed off my bike and leaned it against the side of K.’s house. K.’s house was made of limestone, big blocks of it. It was three full stories, with a cupola on top. It had been a rich person’s house once. Now it was divided into apartments for poorer people. K. lived in one of the two first-floor apartments. She called it a garden apartment, even though there was no garden. There were no plants inside, either, except for a potted impatiens in the kitchen that always looked like something was wrong with it. Maybe it had been mispotted. I knocked on the white storm door. It rattled in its frame. The front light came on, and then the door opened and a hand reached out, grabbed mine — the hand felt leathery and warm, like a saddle that had just been vacated — pulled me inside, then closed the door behind me.
“Oh, honey,” K. said. She put her arms around me; I put mine around her. We stood there like that, in the front hallway. Not talking, just hugging until a kettle whistled in the kitchen. It worked like a referee’s whistle; once we heard it, we stopped what we were doing. K. went into the kitchen and I followed. She was wearing a red terry cloth bathrobe and her hair was wet. She had just come out of the shower, obviously. The house smelled like Australia (her shampoo was from there) and also like butterscotch cookies, which were my favorite. Sure enough, in the kitchen, there was a plate of them, still warm from the oven. K. always had butterscotch cookies waiting for me, ever since the first time I’d walked into her house and we’d just looked at each other for a long time, each of us clearly wondering what was supposed to happen next, until K. had said, “Do you like cookies?” and I’d said, “Butterscotch?” Anyway, I ate a cookie while she turned off the kettle, got herself a mug and a tea bag, poured the water in, and turned to face me. She lowered the bag into the hot water, raised it, then lowered it, raised it, then lowered it.
“Good cookie,” I said through my mouthful.
“I was thinking of you when I made them,” she said, leaning back against the counter, her bare knee peeking through the gap in her robe.
“Can I have another one?” I asked after I’d finished the first.
“Oh, honey,” K. said, “are you sure?”
I said, “Yes, I’m sure,” because this was what she always asked when I wanted more than one cookie, and because this was what I always answered, and because I thought I was.
USUALLY, AFTER I’D eaten all K.’s cookies, I felt good. Weirdly light, despite my full stomach. I felt not like myself. Like I didn’t have a mother or a dad. Like I had forgotten every bad thing that I had ever done, every bad thing that had ever been done to me. But not this time. This time I felt full and dead. It is different forgetting about having a dad when he’s hurt and in the hospital. It’s different forgetting about having a mother when she’s all alone, waiting for you, wondering where you are.
“Are you crying?” K. asked.
“No,” I said, even though the tears were rolling down my cheeks, into my mouth. My nose was running, too. I pulled up the neck of my shirt to wipe my nose, but there were cookie crumbs on my shirt, and it seemed less gross to have a runny nose than to have the crumbs mixed up with the snot. So I left my nose unwiped.
“Oh, honey,” K. said, “you should go home to Carrie.” Every time, after I ate her cookies, K. would suggest I go home to Carrie. And every time, I would show her how I didn’t want to go home by eating more of them. But now I didn’t want to show her. That, I guess, was different, too.
“My dad is home,” I told her. She, of course, knew all about my dad — because she was his student, but also because I’d talked all the time about him going to Iraq. K. smiled at me hopefully. She knew how much I’d missed him and I felt almost as bad for K. as I did for myself — like I was disappointing her or something — when I said, “Not home home. He’s in the VA hospital.” And then I told her how his head and face were shaved, how he was hooked up to the tubes and to the machines, how he’d said a few words to me and how good that had felt, but also how he’d been in a coma for two weeks and how me reading to him didn’t keep him awake like I wanted it to. “He might be in a coma again or something,” I said.
“Oh,” K. said. She looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes and I could tell she was trying not to cry.
“I’m OK,” I told her, but when she opened her eyes again, they were more determined than teary. She walked past me and opened the door. The cold air blew in and blew out, taking the good butterscotch smell with it.
“You’re not OK,” K. said. “You should go home. Carrie needs you.”
“I miss my dad,” I said, crying again and harder now, just because I’d said his name. “How can I miss him? He’s back. He’s here. I can go see him. He woke up today. He’s going to be fine. It’s so stupid.” I waited for a second for K. to tell me she understood what I was saying and everything would be all right. But she didn’t say anything. And I didn’t know how to explain what I was feeling, exactly. Because when I said I missed my dad, what I really meant was that I was so scared that he was going to die. And I was also scared that even if he didn’t die, then he wouldn’t be the way he was before he went to Iraq. And if that happened, it would be my fault, because that would mean that I hadn’t found Exley. And so when I said I missed my dad, I also meant that I missed the way I was before he went to Iraq, that I missed the way I was before I didn’t save him, that I missed the way I was before I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to save him. Because when you say you miss someone, you also mean you miss the way you were before you started missing someone. But I couldn’t tell K. all that and make her understand, so I just said, “It’s so stupid, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” K. said. Her voice was harder than before. Her face looked harder, too. I liked K. because, unlike Mother, there wasn’t anything hard about her. Except now, when I needed her to be soft, she was hard. And how could this happen? How could she be kicking me out of her apartment when just a few minutes earlier she couldn’t wait to let me in? How could everything have gone so wrong so fast? If being with K. was normally like a dream, then this was like a dream gone bad. A dream that turned against the dreamer. “All I know is you’re not going to stop missing him here. Go home.”
I was so mad at her, and I didn’t know what to say. Apparently, when you’re mad at someone and you don’t know what to say, you say something you don’t mean and you hope you’re not made to regret it. “If I go home,” I said, “I’m not coming back.”
“That’s the general idea,” K. said. And she stood there, holding the door open until I did what she told me to do.
Paging Dr. Pahnee
But before I did what K. told me to do, I went to see Dr. Horatio Pahnee. I’d been to two doctors since my dad had gone to Iraq and Mother had decided I was acting funny because of it. The first doctor didn’t work out, so that doctor referred me to Dr. Pahnee. I’d been seeing him once a week for a couple of months. My regular appointment was on Wednesday, after school, but Dr. Pahnee told me that I could come see him at home anytime I needed to. Even six at night on a Sunday. I assumed he was home. Luckily, I knew where home was: it was on the second floor of his white vinyl-sided house, right above his office, right on the way from K.’s house to my own.
There were lights on in the front upstairs windows of his house, so I leaned my bike against the front hedge, walked up the steps. There were two doors: the door to his office on the left, and the door to his home on the right. But there was only one doorbell. I rang it, then waited. It had gotten cold and windy and the fallen maple and oak leaves on Dr. Pahnee’s side lawn were swirling around. He had to be the last person in the neighborhood, in the city, not to have raked his yard. I had the feeling Dr. Pahnee wasn’t much for yard work. His hands were soft and white and marshmallowy. I knew this because when I talked to him every Wednesday, he clasped his hands together, his two index fingers extended, their tips touching his lips. It was like he was kissing the barrel of a gun or holding his lips hostage. Anyway, this was how Dr. Pahnee listened.
