Exley, p.7
Exley, page 7
“Oh,” Mother said to the TV. She put her hands over her face and then mumbled something else. I couldn’t hear what it was, but it didn’t sound happy, and I wondered if she was going to start crying again. It’s OK, I wanted to tell her. Those guys are dead, but my dad isn’t. My dad is in the VA hospital, and he’s in bad shape, and I know you know that because you were crying this morning. Even though you didn’t believe it when the VA hospital called two weeks ago, and even though the hospital didn’t call you this morning, you must have found out this morning somehow that my dad really is in the hospital because you were crying in the bathroom. But you don’t have to cry, because at least he’s not dead. At least he’s alive, and he’s going to get better and then he’s going to come home to us. But I need you to help me get him better, get him home. If you don’t help me, then I still have this plan, but it involves finding Exley, and I don’t know if I can do it. Honestly, the plan scares me a little. Please help me get my dad home; please save me from my plan. But I knew I couldn’t say any of those things until Mother admitted she knew that my dad was in the VA hospital, and if she admitted that, then she’d also have to admit that she’d been wrong about my dad going to Iraq and that I was right. And I knew she wouldn’t admit any of that. We were like an old married couple: neither of us would admit we were wrong unless we were presented with proof that we were wrong. That meant I’d have to bring my dad to Mother; I wouldn’t be able to get Mother to come to him.
Mother took her hands away from her face, and I could see that her eyes were dry, even though they were still red. “I’m sorry, Miller,” Mother said, “but I’m going to bed. I had a long, rough day.” She smiled like she really was sorry, but then she picked up the remote control and — click! — turned off the TV and also ended whatever conversation we were about to have. This was one of the reasons I called her Mother in my head. I went to the kitchen, put two pieces of bread in the toaster, waited until they popped, then peanut-buttered them. Then I brought them back into the living room. Mother was gone, and so was the bottle of Early Times. I ate my toast, walked upstairs. My parents’ door was closed; there was no light coming from underneath the door. I thought maybe she was already asleep. But then I could hear Mother in there, talking very softly. But to whom? And what was she saying? I moved closer to the door and stepped on the loose board in the hall floor, the one that always creaked when you stepped on it. It creaked, and Mother stopped talking. I stood there and listened for a long time, but I heard nothing else. Finally, I went downstairs to my dad’s study. I took a pen and a pad of paper out of my dad’s desk and wrote all about what had happened to me that day, just like Dr. Pahnee told me to do. And while I was at it, I also wrote down another thing that my dad had taught me, just like the first doctor had told me to do. When I was done, I put the pen and paper back in the drawer, closed the drawer, got a copy of A Fan’s Notes out of the window seat (my dad kept a bunch of spare copies stashed there, the way some people store spare batteries or hide bottles of booze, in case of an emergency), and took it with me to my room.
THIS TIME I didn’t stop. I got into bed, sat upright with the help of one of those big corduroy reading pillows with the arms, opened A Fan’s Notes to the first page. I read the whole first sentence: “On Sunday, the eleventh of November, 196–, while sitting at the bar of the New Parrot Restaurant in my home town, Watertown, New York, awaiting the telecast of the New York Giants–Dallas Cowboys football game, I had what, at the time, I took to be a heart attack.” And then I just kept reading. I learned so much: I learned that you never wrote the whole year out, but instead used a - for the last digit. I learned that with some people you could use their whole name, but others you just used their first initial. I learned that Exley’s favorite football team was the New York Giants and that every Sunday he’d have breakfast at the Crystal and read all the New York and Syracuse newspapers, and then, later that day, he’d watch the Giants on the TV at the New Parrot with the bartender, Freddy. I learned that when Exley watched the Giants game at the New Parrot, it really meant he acted the game out, like he was doing charades. I learned that Exley was, or had been, an English teacher in Glacial Falls, a town I’d never heard of. I learned that Exley had a best friend, a guy he called the Counselor. I learned Exley drank, and he drank, and he drank, and he drank so much he thought he’d had a heart attack, although he hadn’t. I learned that he’d been married and that he had twin sons. I learned that sometimes he talked like a guy who didn’t know he wasn’t onstage, and sometimes he talked like a guy who’d learned to speak at a bowling alley. I learned that he sounded a little like my dad, or that my dad sounded a little like him. I learned that Exley’s dad, Earl Exley, was a great athlete and that he was tough, tougher than Exley. I learned that even though his dad had been dead for a long time, Exley hadn’t gotten over it yet. And that was just the first chapter! Anyway, I read and read until I got to the end of the second-to-last page, and then I stopped. Because now that I’d read the book, for the first time, after more than a year of not reading it because I promised my dad I wouldn’t, I didn’t want the book to end. I was like Exley, who never wanted the Giants games to end. I felt the same way about his book. As far as I’d known up until that point, the most important thing about reading a book was to say you’d finished it faster than anyone thought you could. But I did not want to finish this book. Some of the books I’d read had told me that love is fleeting; some of the other books I’d read had told me that love is eternal. But they were wrong. Love isn’t either of those things. Love is not wanting the thing you love to ever end. I was in love with A Fan’s Notes, just like my dad was. And I was in love with my dad, just like I was in love with A Fan’s Notes. I wanted both of them to last forever.
I switched off my lamp, flung my reading pillow onto the floor, then tucked A Fan’s Notes under my sleeping pillow, the way you’d do with one of your teeth, except mine hadn’t even started falling out yet: I was nine years old and still had all the originals.
Part Two
Things I Learned from My Dad, Who Learned Them from Exley (Lesson 2: The Protestant Work Ethic)
I was in the car with my dad and Mother. My dad was driving; Mother was in the passenger seat; I was in the back. It was winter, and it had been winter for a while. The snowbanks on either side of the road were higher than our car, and the snow on the road came up to the middle of our tires, and it was still snowing. We passed a guy shoveling his driveway and my dad said, “Shovel, you fucking dummy.” He said this under his breath, not loud enough for the shoveler to hear it. My dad said things like this all the time. If we passed a guy mowing his lawn, my dad would say, “Mow, you fucking dummy.” If we passed a kayaker on the Black River, my dad would say, “Paddle, you fucking dummy.” I never understood this, and so one day, when Mother wasn’t in the car and we passed a guy working on the outside of his house and my dad said, “Paint, you fucking dummy,” I asked my dad why he was telling the dummy to paint when he was already painting. This was after I knew about A Fan’s Notes but before I’d read it myself. Anyway, my dad explained to me that in A Fan’s Notes, Exley had told guys who were shoveling in Watertown in another winter, “Shovel, you fucking dummies,” and my dad also explained what Exley really meant when he said that and what my dad really meant when he said stuff like that, too. “Get it?” my dad had asked. “Kind of,” I’d said, but he could tell I didn’t, and I could tell this disappointed him. That was a terrible feeling, much worse than not understanding why Exley and my dad had said what they’d said to all the dummies. And so I said to my dad __________ weeks later in the car:
“Dad, did you tell the dummy to shovel because you were critiquing the dummy’s Protestant work ethic?”
My dad looked at me in the rearview, his eyes brightening. Mother looked at my dad; her eyes were bright, too, but in a different way. She opened her mouth to say something but then didn’t. She turned away from my dad and toward her window, just in time for my dad to look in her direction.
“What?” my dad said.
“Nothing,” Mother said. “I was just looking out the window and enjoying the scenery.”
My dad didn’t seem to believe it, maybe because the scenery was Watertown, which we all knew Mother didn’t enjoy. My dad waited for a few more seconds for Mother to say something else, or to think of something else to say to her. Finally he looked back at me in the rearview and said, “What do you think?”
“I think it was a critique of the dummy’s Protestant work ethic,” I said. “I think the dummy had too much of it.”
“I think you’re right,” my dad said. He smiled at me in the mirror and then looked at Mother, who by now had smushed her face right up against the window and was not smiling.
Use Your Mine-Duh
I woke to find Mother standing over me. She had on her Monday work clothes. She wore a different outfit for every day of the week. On Fridays she wore her dark blue pin-striped pantsuit, just to show people that the week wasn’t over and she meant business. On Mondays she wore a black pin-striped pantsuit, just to show people that the weekend was over and she meant business. “Hi, Mom,” I said.
“Hey, sweetie,” she said. We were always nicer to each other first thing in the morning. I don’t think any of the books I’ve read, including Exley’s, ever said why people were nicer to each other in the morning. Maybe people weren’t. Maybe Mother and I were the only ones. She bent down to kiss me, put her right hand on the left side of my pillow for support. I was afraid she was going to feel A Fan’s Notes underneath the pillow, but she didn’t. “Time to get up for school,” Mother said, and kissed me on the forehead.
“OK,” I said. I shifted my head a little and could feel the book move toward Mother’s hand. I knew that I should be getting up, that Mother wanted me to, but I was afraid if I moved my head any more, the book might reveal itself. So I kept my head on the pillow.
“I have to leave for work,” she said. “Please eat some breakfast before you go to school, OK?”
“OK.”
Mother took her hand off the pillow, stood up straight, then looked at her watch and frowned. “Miller, you really need to get up.”
“OK,” I said. I could feel our early morning nice feelings burning off, like dew. Mother could feel it, too.
“I’m sorry to be such a nag,” Mother said. “I love you.”
I loved her, too. But I didn’t feel like I could say so just then. “OK,” I told her instead, again. Mother nodded, like she’d just lost a trial she knew she was going to lose. Then she was gone, out the door, and our nice feelings were gone, too, until the next morning, when we’d start all over again.
I DIDN’T WANT to go to school. I wanted to see my dad; I wanted to keep trying to find Exley. But I knew if I didn’t go to school, then school would tell Mother, and Mother would know something was up. If Mother knew something was up, she’d get me to tell her what it was. She’d ruin everything.
So I got dressed, put A Fan’s Notes in my backpack, ate two bags of mini blueberry muffins and drank a juice box, then walked to school. My first class on Monday was with Mrs. T. In her classroom, above the blackboard, Mrs. T. had tacked up a poster. The poster was broken up into four panels. Each of the panels had a brain. The brains were bright red, like lobsters, and each of the brains had a pair of hands with white gloves on them. In the first panel, the brain was wearing safety goggles and pouring the contents of one test tube into another. In the second panel, the brain was reading the dictionary. In the third panel, the brain was holding a sign with the word CANCER crossed out. In the fourth panel, the brain was wearing a hard hat; its hands were holding either end of a blueprint, a half-built skyscraper rising behind it. At the top of the poster were the words USE YOUR MIND. This happened to be Mrs. T.’s favorite expression, too, except she pronounced it “mine-duh” not “mind.” As in “Miller, use your mine-duh.” Anyway, she taught advanced reading, although it was two months into the school year and we mostly hadn’t read anything yet.
We mostly hadn’t read anything yet, except for the stuff we’d written. Mrs. T. called this “freewriting.” We “freewrote” every day in class. Although it wasn’t exactly free; Mrs. T. would tell us what to write. She called this a “prompt.” The “prompt” was always just one word. Mrs. T. would say, “Mountain.” Or “Family.” Or “Rope.” Then she’d look at her watch and say, “Begin.” And then we’d “freewrite” for fifteen minutes, whatever we wanted as long as it related in some way to the “prompt.” Then Mrs. T. would look at her watch and say, “One minute remains.” One minute later, she’d say, “Stop.” And then one by one we’d read our responses aloud, until the second bell rang. That was advanced reading.
I got there just as the first bell rang. I sat in my assigned seat, next to J., with the zipper scar on her right cheek, who sat next to R., who did not want to be called B., who sat next to L., who began each sentence with the word “so,” who sat next to P., who was black. And so on. They were all at least five years older than me, everyone in the class, including Harold, whose assigned seat was at the far end of the room. He waved to me like a lunatic when I came in. But I didn’t wave back. Harold was my only friend. It makes me sad to say that. But I was Harold’s only friend, too. That made it even sadder for him. Because he was five years older than me; he’d had five extra years to make another friend and hadn’t. But besides Harold, no one else paid much attention to me. I knew from Exley’s book that he hadn’t fit in as a teacher. I wondered if he hadn’t fit in as a student, either. I wondered if he was like me, if he’d felt like a nine-year-old in a class with a bunch of fourteen-year-olds. I wondered if his classmates had treated him like they treated me, like a pet that had one trick: I could read anything, and fast. But that was my only trick. When the older kids realized that, they got bored and ignored me. I wondered if Exley was like that when he was a kid. I wondered if he was still like that.
Mrs. T. watched me climb into my desk chair, pull out my pencil and a piece of paper, and basically get ready to start “freewriting.” But then I was ready and Mrs. T. was still looking at me. “Miller, use your mine-duh,” she finally said. I must have looked at her in a way that told her I thought I was already using it. “Did you forget what we’re doing today?” she asked. When she said that, I looked around and saw that everyone had books on their desks, in addition to their pencils and pieces of paper. Then I remembered. This was the week when everyone in school discussed this year’s America on the Same Page book. Like last year’s, this year’s book was about a war (I guessed that every America on the Same Page book would be about a war until America stopped being in one), except this year the book was about an old war, where people rode horses instead of planes and helicopters and tanks, and fired pistols instead of automatic rifles. I say “people,” but it was really about a boy who was too young to fight in the war but joined the army anyway because his father had fought and died in the war and the boy loved his father and he also loved his father’s horse and gun, which were now the boy’s, since his father had died, and which the boy took into battle, which he couldn’t stop talking about: he couldn’t stop talking about the bodies and the bullets and the blood, the blood, and it was clear that the boy, or the author, or both, loved the battles and the bodies and the bullets and the blood, too, even though he, or they, kept saying how really terrible it all was.
“I remember now,” I said. I reached into my desk and pulled out my copy of the book. I’d read the book the Friday before, in the nine five-minute periods between when one class ended and the next began.
“Good,” Mrs. T. said. Then she looked at us with big, hopeful eyes. We were probably looking at her the same way. None of us knew what we were supposed to do next. I think America on the Same Page’s idea was that after reading the book, we wouldn’t be able to look at the world in the same way, and if that were the case, then we wouldn’t be able to talk about it in the same way, either. But how were we supposed to see it? How were we supposed to talk about it? I think we expected Mrs. T. to tell us; I think she expected us to tell her. But we weren’t going to tell her anything. You could see Mrs. T. realized this, too. It was scary, a little, to watch Mrs. T. become less hopeful and more resentful as she realized that maybe America was on the same page, but we definitely were not. Her eyes got smaller and smaller as she tried to figure out what to do. Finally, she opened to page —— of the book and told us to do the same. We did. Then Mrs. T. put on her glasses (they’d been hanging on a black string around her neck) and read this passage:
It was finally morning. It had stopped raining and the sun had begun to shine and there was a rainbow arcing yellow and blue and bloodred over the battlefield and the steaming bodies of the men and their horses. The ones that were still alive were moaning in the newdawn; the ones that were dead were dead. The boy realized how awful it was to be dead, because once you were dead, that was all there was to be said about you anymore. “My father is dead,” the boy said. It felt terrible to say that. “But I am alive,” the boy said, and that felt wonderful. And then the boy realized why there had been wars and why there would always be wars: because it was better to be alive than to be dead. The boy shouldered his father’s rifle and whispered, “Go,” in his father’s horse’s ear. And they went.
When Mrs. T. was done reading, she took off her glasses, looked at us, and asked hopefully, “Well, what do you think?”
No one said anything at first. The only sound was Harold tapping his pencil against his forehead. This was how he thought. Everyone else was quietly looking down at their desks, waiting for Harold to say something first. Because Harold was always the one who said something first.
“I didn’t like the part about the rainbow,” Harold finally said.
