Exley, page 21
Perhaps one gets out, or tries to get out, by asking questions. So after I say my good-byes to M., I decide to conduct a series of interviews. My first interview should be with the dead soldier’s survivors, but they have already left the Public Square. And since I am already on the Public Square, I decide to finally enter the Crystal and speak to the owner, Mr. D., about M. And since I am apparently in the middle of some transformation and don’t know who I am now or who I might yet be, I decide to keep myself out of the interview entirely, recording only the answers to my questions, not the questions. If Exley’s book has taught me something besides the obscenity of M.’s name for me, it’s that we try, and fail, to fool ourselves into thinking we have the answers to life’s most difficult questions. But if we omit the questions altogether, then perhaps the answers might not seem so foolish.
Doctor’s Notes (Interview with Mr. D.)
He was bothering everyone, talking all the time about Exley this, Exley that. This was years ago. So I said to him, T., you may talk like Exley, and you may act like Exley, and you may drink like Exley, but you may not talk about Exley. That you may not do, not in here. Once we established that, we all got along fine. Anyway, that’s why the other guys don’t know about Exley or that T. is so crazy about him. They’re not exactly what you’d call big readers anyway. The other guys just know T. as the happy drunk who acts like a crazy bastard on Sundays when he watches the Giants but otherwise seems pretty much like them on the other days of the week. Except on Tuesdays, when they call him the Professor.
Because he has his office hours here on Tuesday nights from six to eight. That’s what he calls them: his office hours.
Well, there’s never been any of his students seen in here during office hours, so yeah, I guess you could say we’ve all figured out he’s not really a professor.
Yeah, I guess they’re his friends. They drink together, if that’s what you mean.
Yeah, I guess he’s my friend, too. I’ve known him for a long time anyway.
Yeah, I wondered where he was, and no, I didn’t know he was in the army or in the VA until M. told me.
I guess I believe it. Why would M. lie about that?
Yeah, I know M. He’s a good kid. His dad loves him.
I know that because T. talks about him all the time. He talks about him almost as much as he used to talk about Exley, back when I let him.
Yeah, I know C., too. Not that well. I know that she’s pretty. I know that I wouldn’t mess with her. I know that T. loves her.
Because he says he does.
Just because you spend some time drinking in here doesn’t mean you can’t love your wife.
Well, that’s your opinion.
Well, that’s her opinion, too.
No, I don’t know any K. Whaddya mean, ‘K.’?
Yeah, I know people with that initial. But I’ve never seen any of them doing anything they shouldn’t with T. Not that I’ve seen.
Yeah, I’ve read the book.
Listen, I run a restaurant. I cook food and make drinks. That’s my area of expertise. But yeah, I liked it.
Why does anyone like anything? Because I know things I don’t like and I liked it better than that.
Oh yeah, I knew Exley.
Yeah, “knew.” Exley’s dead.
Yes, I’m sure Exley is dead.
No, I did not see his dead body. But I did see his gravestone up in Brookside Cemetery. So yeah, I’m pretty sure.
SOS
After Dr. Pahnee prevented me from reporting to homeroom so that I could skip the rest of my classes so that I could go find Exley in Alex Bay, I decided to forget about school altogether. Instead, I would go home, call the bus station, and find out when the first bus to Alex Bay was. But in order to get home, I had to walk right past school. J. walked out of school just as I was walking past. She had her backpack on and was wearing brown corduroy pants and the kind of shaggy sweater that looked like the animal it might have been made out of. The sweater was a cardigan, and it was open, and I could see that the pants weren’t pants but overalls. There was a huge button pinned to her sweater. The button said, in white block letters, “DOS.” In the background was an American flag. It wasn’t flat, but flapping, like it was in the wind and not on the button.
“Where have you been?” J. asked.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To the hospital to see my father,” she said.
“In the middle of the school day?” I asked. She gave me a look that asked who was I to talk. “Young lady,” I added in a deep voice. She laughed, took off her button. “Here’s my hall pass,” she said, and handed it to me. I’d seen buttons like it before: DOS meant “Daughter of a Soldier.” I wondered where she got it and where I could get one that said “SOS.” But it seemed like the kind of thing I should have known on my own, and so I didn’t ask her. I handed it back. J. pinned it back on her sweater and started walking. I walked with her, because I’d decided on the spot that since I’d only visited my dad in my head the day before and hadn’t even seen him, I needed to go see him before I went to Alex Bay.
“You missed advanced reading today,” J. said.
“I know.”
“Did you have an excuse?”
“Not really.”
“Mrs. T. is going to kill you.”
“She said that?”
“She didn’t have to,” J. said.
“How do you know, then?”
“I used my mine-duh, Miller,” J. said, and then laughed again. I realized again that I liked her. I really liked her. But I wondered if she was too young for me. K. was so much older than me that it seemed stupid to even worry about it. But J. was only five years older. There was a long piece of honey brown hair hanging from her right shoulder. I really wanted to pull it off and see whether it was her hair or her sweater’s. But I was afraid she’d catch me at it, and then I would have to explain what it was I thought I was doing. And I wouldn’t be able to, because I wouldn’t know, exactly. I would need her to know. But she wouldn’t know, either, probably. That’s what I meant when I wondered whether J. was too young for me.
Anyway, since J. was going to the hospital, I decided I would, too, before I went home. The automatic doors worked, unlike the night before. The lobby was lit like normal. The woman at the front desk was Mrs. C., the same one as two days ago, not the one who saw me in my dad’s empty room. Everything was the same as it always was, and not like it was the night before, in my head, which made me even more sure that it had only been in my head. J. and I said hi to Mrs. C.; she said hi back to J.; to me she said, in a singsongy, aren’t-you-a-naughty-boy way, “I heard someone was somewhere he shouldn’t have been last night.”
When adults talk to you this way, they want you to respond either in a way that confirms that you are, in fact, an idiot kid, or in a way that suggests that you aren’t, but I didn’t know Mrs. C. well enough to know which way I should respond to her, so I didn’t say anything. Besides, whoever she was talking about, it couldn’t have been me, because I’d only been to the hospital in my head. I was still trying to think this way. Mrs. C. just smiled at me, though, like it didn’t matter how or if I responded, which sort of made me scared. “It’s OK,” she said. “Your father’s in his room now. And I’ll tell Dr. I. you’re here. I know he wants to talk to you.” This made me even more scared, especially since I assumed Dr. I. was my dad’s doctor, and there was a reason I hadn’t asked to talk to my dad’s doctor yet: because if I didn’t talk to his doctor, then I wouldn’t have to know how sick he was. And now that it seemed like I was going to have to hear it anyway, I didn’t want to be alone with my dad and the doctor when it happened.
“Do you want to meet my dad?” I asked J.
She had already started to peel off to go to the second floor. But when I asked her that, she stopped, turned, and looked at me with her eyebrows raised, like she was wondering if I was really serious. Suddenly, I felt like a little kid; suddenly, I regretted asking her in the first place. But then she smiled, hooked her thumbs into the halves of her sweater and pulled them toward me, the way I’d seen bigwigs do in the movies with their suspenders, and said, “I’d be honored.” Together we walked through the swinging doors, down the hall, and then into my dad’s room.
My dad was there, in bed. There was a thick white bandage around his head. There seemed to be more tubes running from his arm to the pouches hanging near the bed. There seemed to be more pouches, too. And there was a brand-new tube: it ran from my dad’s nose to a new machine between the stand holding the pouches and the bed. The machine looked like a microwave: it had glass in the front and dials and numbers that were lit and going up, then down, then up. The machine whirred like a bird flapping its wings in a cage. Somebody had shaved my dad’s face, like usual. A Fan’s Notes was still on the table next to his bed, and the Dixie cups were still gone.
“This is my dad!” I said, trying so hard to make my voice sound like it was saying, Ta-da! I turned to J., who was standing behind me. Her left arm was across her chest and under her right armpit, holding the two halves of her sweater together that way. Her right hand was covering her mouth. I saw her seeing my dad. I saw her seeing the bandaged head, the tubes, the pouches. I could hear the new machine whir and whir. “Dad,” I said, turning back to him. “This is J. She’s in my advanced reading class.”
J. walked up and stood next to me. I thought she was going to introduce herself or say hi to my dad or something, but she didn’t. “Is he OK?” she finally asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“What happened to his head?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “They operated on him last night. Dr. I. is coming in to talk to me about it today.”
“I know,” J. said. “I heard Mrs. C. tell you that.” My dad’s head was facing where we were standing. J. bent over, put her hands on her knees, got close to my dad’s face, and studied it for a long time.
“You know,” she finally said, “you look a lot like your dad.”
“I do?” I said. I couldn’t believe it! No one had ever said that we looked alike. Before my dad went into the army and then into the VA hospital, he had a round face and usually a beard. Now it was bare and thin, like mine. I was so happy that J. said that. So I kissed her. I didn’t even think about it beforehand. I kissed her right on the top of the head. J. must have sensed something was going on, though. She stood up straight just as I kissed her, and the top of her head cracked right into my teeth. We stood there, not really looking at each other: me holding my mouth, J. rubbing the top of her head.
“What’s that smell?” J. finally said.
I smelled it, too. It was the room; it smelled like a sick person’s room, and it also smelled like the really powerful chemicals they must use to try to make a room not smell like a sick person’s room. I mean, the whole hospital smelled like that. But my dad’s room smelled much worse, and much worse than before he’d had his surgery. It smelled like something had gone so wrong that nothing could ever make it smell right again. But I didn’t want to say that, so instead I said, “I don’t smell anything.”
“Really?” J. said in a disgusted voice. I looked at her. She still wasn’t looking at me. I couldn’t tell if she was mad at me for kissing her or if the smell really bothered her that much. She was fingering her scar now. “How can you not smell anything?”
I really didn’t want to talk about the smell anymore, and it was making me mad that J. kept talking about it anyway, so I said, “Where’d you get that scar anyway?”
J. immediately stopped fingering it. She glared at me for a second or two, then looked away, toward my dad again.
“I’m sorry,” I said. J. didn’t say anything back. She leaned down to look at my dad up close again. I thought she was going to say it was nice to meet him or something. But she didn’t. She just turned away from him and me and started to walk out of the room. “Where are you going?” I asked. J. didn’t answer. Maybe because it was obvious. “Hey, how’s your dad doing?”
“He’s coming home today,” J. said.
“That’s great!” I said. But by then she’d already left the room and left me alone with my dad and my thoughts. I didn’t want to remember what I’d just said about J.’s scar, and I didn’t want to think too much about what this Dr. I. would say about my dad, either. So I decided to make some more lists. These lists would be of Exley’s favorite and least favorite places and things, so that after I found him in Alex Bay, I’d remember where to go and where to stay away from, what subjects to talk about and what subjects to avoid.
Here are the lists:
EXLEY’S FAVORITE PLACES AND THINGS
The New York Giants
Books
Beer
Vodka Presbyterians (possibly a made-up drink?)
Cigarettes
The Crystal
The New Parrot
Davenports
Chicago
America
Watertown
EXLEY’S LEAST FAVORITE PLACES AND THINGS
Work (noun and verb)
Nuthouses
Schools
Hospitals
Marriage
Army
Institutions of any kind
Books
Beer
Vodka Presbyterians
Black River Country Club
Fort Drum
Watertown
America
I’d just finished writing out the list and putting it in my pocket when Dr. I. came in.
“You’re Miller,” Dr. I. said.
“Are you Dr. I.?” I said. Since this was a military hospital, I expected the doctors to be dressed in military uniform, even though the nurses were dressed like regular nurses. But Dr. I. was dressed like a regular doctor: he had a stethoscope around his neck and was holding a clipboard and wearing a white lab coat, and his face was a grayer white than the lab coat and looked tired, like maybe he hadn’t had enough coffee, even though he was bouncing the clipboard off his chest, like maybe he’d had too much coffee.
“I am,” he said.
“I don’t want to hear what’s wrong with my dad,” I said.
Dr. I. frowned at me in an especially fatigued way, like he wasn’t going to bother trying to understand a joke that he knew wasn’t going to be very funny anyway, and then told me what was wrong with my dad. He told me what had been in my dad’s head: not bullets, or bomb or rocket parts, but pieces of concrete. My dad had been near a concrete wall when a bomb went off. Dr. I. said that they’d taken some pieces of concrete out of his brain in Iraq, and then they’d had to wait until yesterday for the swelling in my dad’s brain to go down enough for them to take out some more pieces. Now, Dr. I. said, they’d gotten out all the pieces that they could get out.
“You mean he still has pieces of concrete in his head?”
“There are pieces in his head, but not in his brain,” Dr. I. said. He said this like I’d understand the difference, which I did, kind of.
“He woke up a couple of days ago,” I said. “When’s he going to wake up again?”
Dr. I. looked at his clipboard, and he was still looking at it when he said, “Your father has extensive brain damage.” Then he said some more things, but I couldn’t really hear them: all I could hear was the sound of the machine, breathing and breathing for my dad.
“He’s not going to wake up, is he?” I said.
This startled Dr. I. He looked up from his chart and said, “Your father is critical, Miller. But as you say, he woke up once. And we certainly were surprised when that happened, I can tell you! If it happened once, it could happen again.”
“But probably not,” I said. I was doing that thing when you say the worst thing you can think of and then hope that someone will tell you that you shouldn’t be saying it.
“Probably not,” Dr. I. said. “Wait, where are you going?”
Because I was already running out of the room. Because I knew from what Dr. I. said that I didn’t have any more time. I knew I had to find Exley right away or else there wouldn’t be any reason to find him. I ran down the hall, through the lobby, past Mrs. C., and out the door, just in time to see J.’s father. He was in a wheelchair; the wheelchair was on a platform, and the platform was attached to a white van. J. was sitting in the passenger seat. Her eyes were closed, her head was tilted up. A woman was standing with her back to me. It must have been J.’s mother. “I’m trying,” she said. She had her left arm inside the van, and I wondered if she was pushing a button. The platform went up, then went down. The platform went up, stopped, seemed to begin to go back into the van, then stopped and vibrated a little. “I’m trying,” J.’s mother said again. I don’t know who she was talking to. Because J.’s father hadn’t said a word, not that I’d heard. He was staring at the hospital with his lips pressed together. He had a blanket over his lap, and his hands were holding tight on to the arms of the wheelchair. J.’s father looked so helpless, just like my dad, and that made me mad; it made me so mad thinking about what joining the army and going to Iraq and fighting for America had done to my dad and J.’s father. Earlier, in the hospital room, talking to Dr. I., I had felt so sad that I wondered if I would ever feel anything else besides sadness again. But now I felt mad, and that was a much better, and much easier, thing to feel. I thought about the lists in my pocket, about what Exley would feel about what had happened to my dad and J.’s father. It would make him mad, too, I was sure of it. I was too far away to show J.’s father my lists, so instead I yelled, “America has incapacitated you!” This was something Exley had written in his book. Actually, he’d written, “I had incapacitated myself.” But whoever had incapacitated whom, America sure hadn’t helped him, or my dad, or J.’s father, either. I yelled it again —“America has incapacitated you!”—and this time J.’s father seemed to hear: he yelled back something that I couldn’t make out. But he didn’t look happy when he was yelling it. Then the platform vibrated again, finally sucking J.’s father into the van. J.’s mother pulled the door shut. The door didn’t have windows. Maybe there were some on the other side. J.’s mother trudged over to the driver’s side, got into the van, and drove them all home.
