Exley (32 page)

“Should I come back later?” I said, and then rubbed my face like something was on it, so that Dr. Pahnee would realize that something was on his. But he didn't rub his face or put on a shirt or anything. He turned and walked back into his office and sat in his chair, like always. I followed him and sat on his couch and watched him light a cigarette. He really did seem like a guy who smoked now, too, except he didn't seem to have an ashtray: he used the floor instead.

“I just got off the phone with your mother,” he said.

“OK,” I said.

“She said she found your diary on the kitchen counter.”

“She couldn't have,” I said. “That's not where I keep it.”

“Where do you keep it?”

“I don't want to tell,” I said. “If I tell, I'm afraid someone will go looking for it and read it without me wanting him to.”

Dr. Pahnee smacked the arms of his chair and yelled, “Cut the shit, Miller. Jesus H. Keeriiisst!” He seemed angry about something again, except I had no idea what it was. I thought we were just having a friendly conversation about my diary. But he was clearly upset, and sweating, too: I could see sweat making trails through the shaving cream. I was
starting to get a little warm, too. The radiator behind me was rattling and hissing.

Anyway, I thought it would maybe make us both feel better if I told Dr. Pahnee what I'd been up to, like always. I didn't tell him about the military funeral because he'd been there with me. Instead, I told him about the guy at the Crystal who'd hit Harold in the mouth and how he wasn't Exley, and then about the shotgun and the dogs and V.'s father and how he wasn't Exley, either; I told him about Mother and going to the Crystal for my early birthday dinner and how she was talking to herself at night; I told him about my dad's bandaged head and the machine that breathed for him and what Dr. I. had said; I told him about what America had done to Exley and my dad and J.'s father, too, and how mad it made me, although I didn't know what to do about it, and how J.'s father who wasn't really her father took me to see the protesters, who didn't know what to do about it, either. I told him that I needed to find Exley soon, before it was too late, but I didn't know how to get to Alexandria Bay. Dr. Pahnee listened, but not with fingers together on his lips—maybe because of the shaving cream. He didn't look me in the eye, either, which he usually did; instead, he was looking off to the side, toward his bookcase. I wondered if he was even listening to me. So I stopped talking. The only sound in the room was the radiator.

“Were you listening?” I finally said.

“Oh, I was listening,” Dr. Pahnee said, and then he got up and walked to the bookcase, pulled out a book, and brought it back to the chair with him. I recognized it right away: it was a copy of
A Fan's Notes
! “You're reading it, too!” I said. Dr. Pahnee ignored that. He put it cover-side down in his lap and opened it and started flipping pages. Finally, he found what he was looking for. “Here it is,” he said, and then he read a passage from
A Fan's Notes
. The part where Dr. Pahnee's name shows up. The part where Exley says
Pahnee
is the French word for “penis,” or at least the French pronunciation of the word for “penis.” When he was done, he put down the book and stared at me, his eyes like brown circles of sky above the cloud of his shaving cream.

“You know you have shaving cream on your face,” I said. But Dr.
Pahnee ignored that, too. He just crossed his arms and said, “And after we're done talking about my name, we can talk about our ‘journaling.'”

I didn't know what he was talking about when he said “our ‘journaling,'” but I knew what he was talking about with Dr. Pahnee. I really did. I didn't want to admit to it, but I knew it would be better if I did. Sometimes you have to tell the truth about some of the stuff you've done so that people will believe you when you tell them the truth about other stuff you haven't done.

“OK,” I said. “I knew what I was doing when I asked if I could call you Dr. Pahnee. But I never thought you'd read the book and find out. Anyway, I'm sorry.”

It was a pretty bad apology, but Dr. Pahnee nodded thoughtfully, like he was going to accept it and we could go back to how we usually were. Except he then said, his voice full of wonder, “You named me that before you read the book.”

“What's that?”

“You asked me to become Dr. Pahnee before you even read the book,” he said.

“No, I didn't.”

“Yes, you did,” he said. “You said you didn't read
A Fan's Notes
until after you went to see your dad in the hospital. Because you'd promised your dad you wouldn't. But you named me Dr. Pahnee ______ weeks before then.”

“No,” I said. “I named you that after I saw my dad. I couldn't have named you that before because I hadn't read the book then. I promised my dad I wouldn't. You've got it wrong.”

“I have it right here,” he said. He got up, walked around his desk, opened a drawer, pulled out a pile of leather-bound notebooks, went through them until he found the one he was looking for. He handed it to me and then stood behind me. On the cover was the word
Notes
etched in fancy gold cursive. “Turn to page ______,” he said. I didn't want to, so Dr. Pahnee did it for me. I saw the date at the top of the page and then Dr. Pahnee's account of the day we agreed he would become Dr. Pahnee. “Now turn to page ______,” Dr. Pahnee said, and I did that and saw a date
weeks after the first date, and an account of the day when I came to his place and told him how I'd seen my dad in the hospital, etc. I kept flipping back and forth between two pages, like I was reading them carefully, but I wasn't: I was trying to think of what to say next. I thought of accusing Dr. Pahnee of lying in his notes—about the dates, their order, what he said I said, and when—but I knew if I did that, then he'd accuse me of doing the same thing in my journal. I thought about saying something else, like how my dad always called his ______ “Dr. Pahnee” and that's where I learned about it and not by reading the book. But that wasn't true, and besides, that would make my dad sound creepy and pathetic and I didn't want to do that. I couldn't do that.

“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.”

 

 

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.”