Exley (35 page)

Mother paused for a second. She looked calmly around the room.

“Does it matter how it happened?” Mother finally asked. “Does it matter whether the women were wounded or killed in combat or at home?”

This was a rhetorical question. Anyone who had ever heard one would have recognized it. The answer was yes.

“No,” Exley's voice said. I tracked it and found him standing toward the front of the room, off to the left. Everyone's head swiveled. He was standing with his hands in his pockets. He had big eyes. I wasn't sure if he was looking at Mother or at the wall where the pictures had been.

“No?” Mother said. She looked blankly in Exley's direction, which was a little bit of a relief. Mother clearly didn't recognize him.
“No
? No, there is no difference between a woman volunteering to serve in a war in which she knows she might be wounded or killed, and a woman getting wounded or killed by her boyfriend?”

“That's what I'm saying,” Exley said. “What's the difference? No matter what or where, what happened to them is . . .” Exley stopped and closed his eyes. It was like he was looking for something in his head.

“Wrong?” Mother said.

Exley opened his eyes. “Cha damn right they're wrong,” he said.

“Are you saying it's wrong for a woman to join the army?”

I could see Exley think about this. His eyes went to his shoes. He looked like he needed help, which was too bad. Because I couldn't help him, just like I couldn't help my dad when he was arguing with Mother. Because my dad was always trying to tell Mother, in so many words,
You think me being like Exley is a bad thing, but it's not. Exley is not a bad guy and neither am I. And I'm going to prove that by showing you that M. doesn't think I'm a bad guy and so you shouldn't, either
. Just like how Exley was trying to tell Mother,
I know you think I'm a bad guy, but I'm not. I know you think, since I thought about hurting women in my book, that makes me the same as the guys who actually did hurt the women in the pictures you showed us. But I'm not the same, and I'm going to prove that by saying what I think you want to hear tonight in front of all these people
. When my dad looked at me during these arguments, I could never figure out whether he wanted me to say that all men weren't as bad as Mother seemed to think they were, or that he wasn't as bad as all other men. What he never seemed to understand was that Mother wasn't talking about all other men: she was talking about him. And what Exley didn't seem to
understand was that she wasn't talking about him: she was talking about the women who'd been hurt by all these other guys. Anyway, I couldn't ever help my dad, and I couldn't help Exley, either.

“C'mon, friend,” Exley finally said. “All I'm sayin' . . .”

“I
know
what you're saying,
friend
,” Mother said. Now it was Exley who was embarrassing me.
Stop talking like that
, I wanted to tell him. “You're saying,
friend
, that no matter how a woman gets hurt, no matter who hurts her, it's wrong. That she's a victim. Right?”

Exley nodded and smiled, like he thought Mother was really agreeing with him, and then he looked at me. I don't know why: maybe he wanted me to be happy for him because he thought Mother was agreeing with him. She wasn't, and she wasn't looking at him anymore, either. Her eyes had followed his, all the way to me.

“Miller,” Mother said as she looked at me, then at Exley, then back to me again. “My son, Miller, is here,” Mother announced, and gestured toward me. Everyone turned and smiled in my direction, because everyone likes it when a Mother takes her son to work. Except Mother hadn't. “Miller doesn't know this, but I had a long phone conversation with one of his teachers this afternoon. According to Mrs. T., Miller has something of an attendance problem. It was kind of him to drop by tonight. But he really has to be going now.” And here she looked at Exley—not blankly like before, but like she was
this close
to recognizing him. “And he should take his friend with him.”

EXLEY AND I
crept out of the YWCA and onto the Public Square. It was cold. There was snow on the ground, up to the middle of my shins. The sky was blue black and the stars were out and the Public Square was empty: no one was sleeping on the benches or peeing on the monument. It was nice. Exley didn't say anything at first. He just started walking, for about five minutes, and then he stopped. We were in the same neighborhood as Dr. Pahnee's house and office. I looked up and saw what must have been Exley's house, but from the way we were standing on the sidewalk, I guessed he wasn't going to invite me in. I could see his face in the streetlight: there was a look on it that was part pissed off, part apologetic, part dreamy.

“Sorry,” he finally said.

“You should be,” I said.

“Whacha gonna say to your mom when she gets home?”

“I don't know.”

“She's real smart,” Exley said.

“Cha think?” I said.

“Smarter than you,” Exley said.

“Smarter than you, too,” I said. Exley nodded, then looked over at me sadly, like he needed me to give him something. Except I didn't have anything to give him, not even the bottle of Popov, which we'd left back at the house.

“I was on her side, for Christ's sake,” he said. “It was like she wasn't even listening to me.”

“Do you know why?” I said. I was mad at him. I was always mad at my dad, too, after he'd lost his fights with Mother. Later, I would be mad at her. But right after the fight, I was always mad at him, maybe for losing it. “It's the way you talk.”

“What about it?”

“It's like only half of you is talking,” I said. I went through the list of things he said, all the “cha's” and “friend's.” And then I talked about all the stuff he wasn't saying. All the complicated stuff. “One kind of stuff is no good without the other,” I told him. I thought Exley would get mad, but he didn't. He looked sad, defeated. He nodded, and kept nodding, even when I'd stopped talking. Exley looked older than he had earlier. And I thought that maybe this was what it means to get old: to have someone much younger remind you of how you weren't the same person you used to be.
Time catches up with all of us
, I thought. This, of course, was exactly the kind of thought a kid might have on the eve of his tenth birthday.

“Hey, tomorrow is my birthday,” I said to Exley. “I'm going to be ten.” This seemed to cheer Exley up a little. At least he stopped nodding and smiled at me. “Cha ask for anything special?” he asked. He winced after he said that. I wondered if it was because he heard himself say “cha” again.

“Just two things,” I said. I was thinking, of course, of finding Exley and him saving my dad. “And I got one of them already.”

It was a cheese-ball thing to say, and once I said it I thought Exley might make me regret it. But he didn't. He nodded again and then pulled
A Fan's Notes
out of his jacket pocket. “You really like this thing?” he asked, and looked at me with his big, needy eyes again. This time, I could give him what he needed.

“My dad and I think it's the best book that's ever been written,” I said. “We love it.”

“This fuckin' thing?” he said. I could tell he was embarrassed, but in a good way. “This”—and he looked at the page he'd opened to and read—“‘record of yesterday's monstrous deceptions, betrayals, and obscenities'?”

“Yes,” I said. Then I hugged him. I had to; I couldn't stop myself. And Exley let me do it; he let me. He might even have hugged me back a little. “Yes, that's it,” I told him. “That's the one we love.”

 

 

W
hen I return home, do I think of the fool I made of myself in front of M.'s mother, or the fool she made of me? Do I fret about whether she recognized me, whether she has spotted the mental health professional through my nicotine-stained beard, my Exleyed manner of dress and address? Do I wonder whether my way of acting like Exley might have acted is even more pathetic than my usual ways of acting like myself? Do I wonder what M. will say to his mother when she returns home? I do not. All I can do is think of how M.'s mother looked, standing in that room. She looked . . . well, I cannot accurately describe how she looked. Perhaps a writer might be able to do justice to her beauty; perhaps Exley would be able to describe her, although more likely he would make a profanation out of the description. No, I can't describe what she looked like, but I can describe what I thought when I saw her. Notes, I thought,
This really must be love: to remember exactly what one is thinking when one falls in love
. When I first spotted M.'s mother in that room, I addressed myself mentally:
You can't really think you have a chance with her. Every other man in this place is like you. Every other man here thinks she's beautiful, too
. And then I thought,
Oh, lucky day: there are no other men here. There are only M. and you. The rest are women
.

Women
, I think. And then I think,
Men
. And then I run over to my desk. I lift you, Notes, and underneath I find the manila envelope containing the three letters that purport to be to M. from M.'s father, and also the newspaper notice of the ceremony earlier today on the Public Square. I take out the newspaper clipping. I read it. I read the name of the dead soldier. I light a Pall Mall and read the name again. The name is Army Captain K.R. The captain is a man. And his first name is K.

“You fool,” I think and also say. I throw on my lined flannel shirt, put
the newspaper clipping back in the envelope and the envelope in my breast pocket, and sprint through the snow back to the YWCA. It is nearly an hour after M. and I left the building, but I can see M.'s mother standing in the ballroom, speaking to a couple of stragglers. I wait until M.'s mother emerges from the building. It is snowing again, the flakes gently drifting down in the streetlights until they land and melt in her black, black hair. The beloved never looks so beautiful as in the moment before she is about to stop being the beloved. I have so many things to say to and ask M.'s mother, but all I can think to say when she sees me standing on the sidewalk, gawking at her, is, “Oh my lord, Mrs. L.R.”

She blushes and says, “Please call me C.” Then she takes a long look at me and says, “Wow, so that
was
you in there.”

I feel the heat rushing to my face, because I think she's mistaken me for Exley. “No,” I say. “It's just me. M.'s doctor.”

“I know that's who you are,” she says, frowning. “You just look different.”

“It's the beard,” I say.

“That's part of it,” she says, still frowning. “I thought I asked you not to come to the lecture tonight.”

“I know,” I say. “But I couldn't help myself.” I pause, thinking of what I should say next. “You were very impressive,” I say, but she ignores the compliment.

“Why did you bring M.?” she wants to know. “Is this part of his treatment?”

Yes
, I almost say, but then I think,
No. No more lies
. “No,” I say. “He came because I wanted to go. If I hadn't gone, he wouldn't have, either.”

M.'s mother nods at this and then asks, “Who did you think I was talking about?”

“When?”

“Earlier. When I said, ‘Wow, so that
was
you in there,' and you said, ‘No. It's just me. M.'s doctor.' Who'd you think I was talking about?”

“Frederick Exley,” I say.

M.'s mother's frown deepens and turns into something else, something more permanent seeming. “Why would I think
you
were
him
?”

“Because M. does,” I say.

“Why does M. think that?”

“Because he wants to,” I say. “Because I let him. Because he thinks his dad is in the VA hospital and the only way to save him is if he finds Exley and brings him to his dad.”

We both stand there and watch as a snowplow makes a scraping, shooshing lap around the Square and then heads south on Washington. After that, the Square is quiet. There is nothing as quiet as nighttime Watertown after a plow has passed through and it's still snowing. There's nothing as quiet as that moment before one person is about to tell another something neither of them wants to hear.

“I saw you here this morning,” I say.

“Where?”

“Right here,” I say. “On the Square.”

“What do you mean?” she says.

For Christ's sake, C., cut the shit, will ya
? is what I want to say. But these are Exley's words, or close to them, and I know those are exactly the wrong words to use with M.'s mother. So instead, I don't say anything. I simply reach into my pocket, take out the manila envelope, take the newspaper clipping out of the envelope, and hand it to her. She reads it for a long, long time—far longer than the quantity of text warrants.

“Oh, C.,” I say. Because for the first time, she is no longer M.'s mother to me. She is herself. Apparently, you become yourself to someone when that someone finally learns your secrets. “Tell me what you've been up to.”

“I can't,” she says, still looking at the clipping. This is a familiar moment for a mental health professional. To be a mental health professional, you have to know when patients are incapable of speaking for themselves, and when that happens, you have to know how to speak for them. There is enough residual mental health professional in me to know that this is one of those times.

“He was K., wasn't he,” I say. “M. thinks his dad was having an affair with a woman named K. because that's something Exley might have done. But M.'s dad wasn't. You were having an affair with a man named K.”