Exley, page 25
“You told your dad you wouldn’t read A Fan’s Notes,” Dr. Pahnee said, “but you did.”
“No!” I said, but I don’t think Dr. Pahnee was listening anymore: I heard him walking away and a little while later I heard him walking back. “What are you thinking?” he asked.
I didn’t answer him, but I was thinking about how I’d broken my promise to my dad and read A Fan’s Notes and how sorry I was, and how I could never be sorry enough to make up for having broken my promise and how I’d never stop feeling sorry about it, would never be able to stop thinking about it, because that’s one of the reasons my dad had gone to Iraq: because I’d broken my promise. I’d known that ever since he left, even though I didn’t want to admit it, and I didn’t admit it to Dr. Pahnee right then, either. That’s why I was just sitting there, with my head down. I wasn’t reading Dr. Pahnee’s notes, but he must have thought I was, because they were still open in front of me.
“It’s all true, you know,” he said. He’d put on a collared blue corduroy shirt and had wiped off the shaving cream; his beard looked wet and flat, like grass in the morning after an animal has slept on it. He pointed down at his notes. “It’s all true. Every word.”
Like a lot of people who tell the truth, Dr. Pahnee sounded like he wanted to be congratulated for telling it. “Congratulations,” I said.
“It’s all true as far as it goes,” he said. “But it doesn’t go far enough. I need you to tell me the rest of it.”
“I don’t think I can do that,” I said.
Dr. Pahnee took the notes away from me, walked around his desk, sat down, and opened the book to a blank page. Then he picked up a pen. “Sure, you can,” he said. “We’ll do it together. I’ll ask questions, and you answer. Your answers can be as complicated as they need to be, but I’ll keep my questions as simple as I can. You talk and I’ll write.”
Doctor’s Notes (Interview with M.)
Q: Did you really teach your father’s class at Jefferson County Community College?
A: No.
Q: Did your father really teach at Jefferson County Community College?
A: No. He said he did, but when I went to the registrar’s office, they said he wasn’t teaching a class that semester and had never taught a class.
Q: So you found an empty class and pretended to teach his class?
A: Yes.
Q: And you pretended you had students, too.
A: Yes.
Q: And you pretended K. was one of your students.
A: Yes.
Q: Have you ever met K.?
A: No. (Long pause.) Not that I know of.
Q: But you assume she is real.
A: Yes. Because both Mother and my dad mentioned her name.
Q: Your father said she was his student.
A: Yes.
Q: Except he didn’t have any students.
A: Yes. I mean, no, he didn’t have any students.
Q: So who do you assume she was?
A: (Silence.)
Q: What kind of relationship do you think your father and this K. had?
A: (Silence.)
Q: Where do you assume your father was when he was supposed to be teaching his class?
A: (Silence.)
Q: Do you assume your father and this K. had an extramarital affair?
A: My dad wouldn’t do something like that.
Q: Exley would have done something like that.
A: (Silence.)
Q: You did something like that in your head. Why?
A: If I was with K. in my head, then I thought I wouldn’t be able to picture her with my dad in real life. It worked, too, at least for a little while.
Q: If your father and this K. didn’t have an affair, what do you think they had?
A: (Long pause.) I don’t know.
Q: Do you think your father’s joining the army and going to Iraq had something to do with K.?
A: I told you I don’t know.
Q: Do you think your mother found out about K. and kicked him out and that’s why your dad joined the army and went to Iraq?
A: (Long pause.) Yes, I think that might be part of the reason.
Q: What’s the other part?
A: The other part also happened on the twentieth of March, 200–.
Q: The day your dad left to go to Iraq?
A: Yes. I’d come home from school. It was the last day of school before spring break, like I told you. Mother was in the driveway, crying. But my dad wasn’t in his car yet. He was standing in the driveway with her. And I wasn’t hiding behind the bushes. I was just walking down the sidewalk. But you know all that from reading my journal.
Q: (Long pause.) I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. But why did you lie to me about hiding behind the bushes in the first place?
A: Because I didn’t want to be in the story. Because I didn’t want to admit I had anything to do with anything.
Q: But you did.
A: As I turned into the driveway, I could hear my dad say, “Poor K.” At first I thought my dad was saying the Spanish word for “because.” I’d just learned that word in my Spanish 1 class. Except my dad didn’t know any Spanish. That’s when I realized what he was saying, and I also realized, since I knew my dad liked to refer to some people by their first initial, because Exley did, that K. was probably the first letter of someone’s first name, and not the name itself. But I didn’t know who K. was, and I didn’t know why my dad said “Poor K.” like he did: like he wasn’t really sorry for K., whoever K. was.
“Who’s K.?” I asked. Neither of them had noticed me until then. When they heard my voice, they both turned to look at me. But they didn’t say anything. There was a weird feeling around all of us, like something was missing in the air. It was like the feeling you get right before or after a thunderstorm, or the feeling you get when someone’s just been talking about you. Except my dad and Mother hadn’t been talking about me. They’d been talking about K. Or at least my dad had been. “Who is K.?” I asked again.
Mother looked away from me and at my dad. At first I thought I recognized the look, because I’d seen it so often: she was angry at him. And then the look changed, like she was about to cry again. And then that look changed again, like she was asking my dad a really big favor. It was a complicated look. I remember thinking that, and I also remember thinking that you had to have known someone for a really long time to be able to look at him like that, and he had to have known you for a really long time to be able to understand it.
“K. is one of my students at the college,” my dad finally said. He said it to Mother, not to me. Mother smiled and then started laughing, but the laugh was dry, more like a cough than a laugh, like Mother didn’t exactly think what my dad had said was funny. And sure enough, then she started crying again. Before Mother started crying, my dad had taken a few steps toward his car; after she started crying, my dad stopped walking and looked back at Mother, like he didn’t want to keep walking and wouldn’t keep walking if someone gave him a good reason not to. That’s when I pulled my report card out of my backpack. I always got good report cards, and they always made my dad happy. Anyway, I gave him my report card. I hadn’t opened it before I got home because they always told you not to. My dad opened the envelope, took out the report card, read it, and then said, “Oh, buddy.” Mother took the report card from my dad and read it and said, “Shit, Tom.”
“It’s not my fault,” my dad said.
“It is your fault,” Mother said. “You’re going to turn M. into someone just like you if you’re not careful.”
“Funny,” my dad said. “That sounds like something K. would probably say.”
Mother went thin lipped and didn’t answer. I took the report card from her and read it. I looked at the grades first. They were all As. Then I looked at the space they leave for teachers’ comments. Only one teacher wrote anything. That was Ms. W., my English teacher, and she wrote, “M. certainly is a smart one. And a hard worker! For instance, for our America on the Same Page book, he wrote two book reports: one for the book itself, and one for a book called A Fan’s Notes, in which he argues (in great detail!) why that book is better than the America on the Same Page book. I’ve never read this A Fan’s Notes, but it certainly sounds interesting!”
When I was done reading what Ms. W. had written, I looked up. My dad was in his car, and the car was running. “It’s OK, bud,” he said to me. “It’s not your fault.” And then to Mother: “Maybe I should go to Iraq, too.” And that’s when Mother said, “Please,” and then my dad drove away and then Mother told me wherever my dad was going, it wasn’t Iraq.
Q: (Long pause.) You read the book even though your dad asked you not to.
A: (Crying quietly.) Yes.
Q: And you think your dad joined the army and went to Iraq because you disappointed him by reading the book when you said you wouldn’t?
A: (Sniffling.) Yes. Why did I have to do that? (Long pause.) He loved the book so much. I just wanted to see why he loved it so much.
Q: But I thought he joined up because of K.? Did he join up because he’d had an affair with K. and your mother kicked him out of the house? Or did he join up because he found out you read A Fan’s Notes?
A: (Long pause.) I think maybe it was both.
Q: And didn’t you wonder in your journal if your dad had joined up so that the war could get over faster and A Fan’s Notes could then be an America on the Same Page book?
A: I wanted that to be true. But I didn’t really believe it was.
Q: And didn’t you also think in your journal that your dad had decided the world was killing and death, and if that were true, then he didn’t need A Fan’s Notes anymore?
A: I didn’t really mean that.
Q: Even though that’s what he basically did in his last letter. Got rid of A Fan’s Notes.
A: What last letter?
Q: (Silence.)
A: What last letter? I only got one from my dad. He never wrote me another one.
Q: (Silence.)
A: Did he?
Q: Anyway, now your dad is back.
A: Yes.
Q: He’s really back and he’s really a patient in the VA hospital.
A: Yes!
Q: And you’re trying to find Exley and bring him to your dad.
A: Yes.
Q: And you think that will help your dad get better.
A: I know it will.
Q: How do you know that Exley can do that?
A: Because my dad was fine before he gave up Exley and went to Iraq.
Q: It doesn’t sound like your mother thought your dad was fine.
A: (Long pause.) Is that a question? Because it doesn’t sound like a question.
Q: And what do you think will happen if you don’t find Exley?
A: (Long pause.) If I don’t find Exley, then I think my dad is going to die.
Doctor’s Notes (Entry 23)
After I have completed my interview with M., I put down my pen, come out from behind my desk, and sit next to him on the couch. Such sharing of furniture between oneself and one’s patient is, of course, considered improper. But so is sitting shirtless in front of one’s patient, and so is falling in love with one’s patient’s mother, and so is breaking into one’s patient’s house. Besides, M. looks so sad, so small, so diminished sitting on my couch alone, that I can’t let him sit there by himself. I even put my arm around him, which is definitely verboten, which M. knows, since he falsely accused me of doing much worse in his false diary. But I don’t care. Fuck it, I think, and then light a cigarette and offer M. one, too. He declines, and I am relieved that he declines, which shows that I’m not totally gone yet.
“I think you should take me to see your dad,” I say.
“I thought you didn’t believe that he was my dad,” he says.
“I didn’t,” I say. “But I do now.” In truth, I still don’t entirely believe him. But I believe every other answer M. gave in our interview was true—including his not knowing about the three letters on his mother’s dresser—and so I don’t entirely not believe him, either. A tricky bit of business, this believing in someone else. So tricky that we would never do it, if we did not want someone, someday, to believe in us, too. “I believe your dad is in the VA hospital. I want you to take me to see him.”
M. shakes his head. “No,” he says.
“M.—,” I start to say, but M. cuts me off.
“No!” he yells, and he does not seem so small, so diminished anymore. “I did that with J. and it ended up being terrible. The only person who can see my dad besides me is Exley. If you want to help me, you need to help me find Exley.”
I think about what Mr. D. has told me: That Exley is dead. That he’s buried up in Brookside Cemetery. That if anyone is qualified to tell M. this terrible news, it’s me, his doctor: “M.,” I say, “there’s no use in going to Alexandria Bay. Exley is . . .” M.’s face seems to indicate that he knows what I’m about to say: his face contracts, as though preparing itself for some awful pain. I can picture him hearing the news that Exley is dead. I can picture him giving up on his quest to save his father, if it really is his father. I can picture him going home to his mother and telling her everything. I can picture her calling me to tell me my services are no longer needed and thanks for nothing. I can picture my own face contracting in pain. And then I cannot picture it ever stopping. This is the problem with pain: it makes it impossible to imagine anything but its going on forever, unless it allows you to imagine doing anything and everything to stop it from going on forever. “If I help you,” I say to M., “will you tell your mother that you lied in your diary entry? Will you tell her that I actually am a nice man, who’d do anything for her?”
“For her?”
“I mean, for you,” I say. “For both of you.”
M. says he will, and then he looks at me in that way of his, that way that suggests you aren’t exactly a human being, but rather a possible cog, a potential working part of one of his mysterious ideas. “Do you really mean that? That you’d do anything for us?”
“Yes,” I say. “Are we agreed?”
M. indicates that we are.
“OK,” I say. “I’ll help you find Exley.”
I expect M. to exult in this news, but he does not. “I know you will,” he says gravely, like there’s serious business yet to be done. He then reaches into his back pocket, pulls out several pieces of paper, and says, “We’ll start with these lists.”
Part Five
Things I Learned from My Dad, Who Learned Them from Exley (Lesson 5: Love)
We were looking at photo albums in the living room. I don’t know how old I was, specifically, but generally, I was at the age when you first get the idea that your parents’ lives didn’t begin when yours did. My parents were sitting on either side of me, on the couch, and letting me flip the pages, which was a mistake. I don’t know about you, but I love looking through photo albums, and one of the things I love most about it is not looking at the photos but seeing how fast I can flip the pages.
“Whoa, bud,” my dad said. “Slow down.” He put his hand on a page to stop me from flipping it. I looked at the photo next to where his hand was. It was of Mother and my dad. They were standing in front of a wooden bar with a mirror behind the bar. There were Christmas decorations around the mirror, but still, I recognized it as the Crystal. My dad looked younger, and thinner than he’d been before he went to Iraq. Mother was standing next to him, wearing a plaid skirt and a red sweater and generally dressed for the holiday. Her cheeks were red like her sweater, and she looked very pretty. They were both holding glasses of nog. My parents both looked genuinely happy—not happy like they were trying to convince the photographer that they were happy, but happy like they didn’t care what the photographer thought. I felt like I could have looked at the picture forever, even though I didn’t quite believe it was real, maybe because it was taken before I was born.
“When was this?” I said. Mother took the photo out of the plastic sleeve and flipped it over. It said, in her handwriting: “Dec. 20, 198–.”
“The night we first met,” Mother said to my dad. My dad sipped his Genny Light, then smiled at her, and then at me, and then at her again. “I’d just gotten out of law school. And your dad had just moved here from Utica.”
“Why did you move here anyway?” I asked my dad. I knew he was born in Utica and moved here from there, but this was the first time I’d ever thought to ask him why.
My dad shrugged. “I’d read good things about it in a book, I guess.”
Mother laughed at that. I hadn’t read, or even heard of, Exley’s book at this point, and so I didn’t know what book my dad was talking about or why Mother was laughing. But her laughter wasn’t bitter like it could be. It sounded fond, and far away. “It was the Crystal’s annual Christmas party,” Mother said. “I didn’t know anyone. Earlier in the night, before this picture was taken, I saw your dad turning around and around, like he was looking for someone. I thought maybe it was me he was looking for.”
