Exley (36 page)

C. nods, still looking at the clipping.

“And he was a soldier,” I say. “And he died in Iraq. You found out on Sunday. That's why M. found you crying in the bathroom.”

“K. was in the reserves,” C. says. “He was the other lawyer in my office before they called him up.”

I can hear something in her voice, something that tells me she still loves him. The way I want her to love me. The way I love her. The way M.'s dad and K. probably loved her, too, even though they were cruel to her. The way I'm about to be cruel to her as well. And why? Why does love let us be so cruel to the beloved?

“And he was married,” I say.

“Stop it,” C. says.

“And he told you he would leave his wife for you.”

“Please stop it,” C. says.

“But he didn't.”

“Fine,” she says, finally looking up at me. And I know immediately that I've gone too far. And I also know that this is why love allows us to be so cruel to the beloved: so that the beloved doesn't make the mistake of loving us again or loving us for the first time. “You want me to fucking say it?”

“No, no,” I say. “Not at all necessary.”

“K. told me he was going to leave his wife,” C. says. “Because I wasn't totally stupid. I told him I'd leave T., that I was willing to do that, that I didn't love T. the way I loved K. But he'd have to leave his wife at the same time. We'd have to do it together. Because I didn't want to mess up M.'s life unless it was for a very good reason.” She pauses and then says, “I guess that makes me sound like a shitty mother.”

“No,” I say. “It just makes you sound practical.”

C. stares at me for a while. I can tell she's trying to determine whether I'm saying this sarcastically, whether it's an insult. But it's not an insult. I don't think she's a bad mother for cheating on her husband, and I don't think she's a bad mother for being willing to disrupt M.'s life in the name of love, and I don't think she's a bad mother, or person, for agreeing to go on a date with me just days after learning her former lover has been killed. I think C. was just being practical. I think C. knew that M. would never love her as much as he loved his dad, and she also knew how lonely that would feel, and so she would need someone else to love, and to love her,
in addition to loving M. I think C. just didn't want to feel alone, which is about the most practical thing any of us could ever want.

“Anyway,” she says, “K. said he would. He'd been telling me that for months. And then he got called up and he said he couldn't do it. He said he couldn't go to Iraq and leave his wife and son at the same time.” C. pauses. “When he said that, I said, ‘K., I love you.' I thought that would make a difference. Like an
idiot
.”

“You're not an idiot,” I say.

“And you know what he said?” C. asks. I don't answer, because she's not actually talking to me anymore. “He said, ‘I don't know what to say.'”

“How did he say this?” I ask.

C. looks at me the way her son looked at me —— weeks earlier when I asked a similar question about M.'s father. “With his mouth,” she says.

“No, no,” I say. “What was the method of delivery? Did he call you on the telephone? Did he tell you at work?”

“He told me at home,” she says. “I'd taken off early from work. He knew that, and he also knew T. was supposed to be out grocery shopping for our Christmas dinner. T. told me that's what he'd be doing: shopping. He said he wouldn't be home until five. But instead he pulled into the driveway two hours before then, right as K. was pulling out.”

“He knew K.?”

“T. had met him a couple of times. Enough to recognize him. And I talked about K. a lot without realizing I was talking about him a lot.” C. stopped for a moment, like she was conjuring up some distant memory and trying to decide whether it was a fond memory or a bitter one. “Once, before K. and I even started seeing each other, I was telling T. about how K. had reassured one of our clients that it was all right to press charges against her husband, and how most men didn't know how to speak to women who didn't know how not to be afraid of them, but K. did, and T. said, ‘You sure talk about this K. a lot. Should I be worried about him, for Christ's sake?' And I said, ‘Don't be ridiculous, no.' But I thought,
Oh God, you
should
be worried. We all should
.”

I let C. think about this for a moment before saying, “You were standing in the driveway . . .”

“Yes, I was standing in the driveway, crying. Like an
idiot
. M.'s father got out of his car. He watched K.'s car until it drove out of sight. Then he looked back at me. His eyes were red and squinty. He smelled like he'd been drinking at the Crystal, not like he'd been shopping at the Big M. ‘Why aren't you grocery shopping?' I asked him.

“‘The store was closed,' he said.

“‘The grocery store was closed?' I said. ‘At three in the afternoon?'

“‘You're right,' he said. ‘I never made it to the store. I was out drinking at the Crystal. Now why don't you tell me why K. was here and why you're crying?'”

“And then you told him the truth?” I ask, and she nods. “Why did you do that?”

“Because I just wanted it to be over,” she says. “Our marriage had been over for so long anyway. I didn't want to pretend that it wasn't anymore.”

“And this happened on Friday, the twentieth of March, 200–?” When I say that, C. starts to cry finally, so loudly that the falling snow and the empty, snow-covered Square can't muffle it. “You sound like M.,” she says.

“Who sounds like M.'s dad,” I say. Which reminds me of the last thing I need to know. “Why did M.'s dad let him think K. was his student?”

“Because,” C. says, “he didn't want M. to think his mother was a whore.”

“Don't say that,” I say.

“M.'s father turned me into a shrew,” C. says. “And K. turned me into a whore.”

“Don't
say
shit like that,” I say.

“The question is, what are you going to turn me into?”

I'm going to turn you into my very own
, I think.
I'm going to take you to the NCMHP meeting tomorrow and we're going to forget all this. We're going to act like this never happened and doesn't matter
. But that's impossible—impossible, not because I don't want anything to do with C. now that I know her secret, but because she only wanted something to do with me because I was a man who didn't know she had a secret. I know
that now, just as I know it's impossible to turn C. back into K.'s lover or T.'s wife or anything else. Except, possibly, M.'s mother.

“I think M. is actually telling the truth this time,” I say. “I think his dad really is in the VA hospital.”

M.'s mother nods like she's hearing some expected piece of news. “So you're going to turn me into a fool,” she says. “Just like M.”

“No, no,” I say. “M. says he suffered a head injury in Iraq. A really bad one.”

“You know, you've been a big help with M.,” M.'s mother says. “You've been a
huge
help. Massive. But I think I'll take it from here.”

“I think these letters really are from M.'s dad,” I say, waving the manila envelope at her. “I know you think M. wrote them and paid someone to send them to you from an army post office. But I don't think he did. I think his dad did. I think his dad really did send these from Iraq.”

“How did you get your hands on that anyway?” she asks. She sticks out a gloved hand and I put the envelope in it.

“I stole it off your dresser,” I admit. “The night you took M. out to the Crystal. The same night I read M.'s journal.” I see the look on her face, and I clarify. “No, no. His
real
journal. It's in the window seat. It's different from the diary you read. It tells the truth, somewhat.”

“You
broke into my house
?”

I consider defending myself by saying that I didn't actually break in, that the door was unlocked. But I don't say that. Instead I say, “Please don't tear up those letters. M. hasn't read them yet. He still thinks his dad stopped writing him four months ago and he can't figure out why. It's killing him. Please don't tear up those letters.”

M.'s mother stares at me for a moment, like I must be kidding; I stare back in a way that must suggest I'm not. But she doesn't tear up the letters, at least. She puts the manila envelope in her coat pocket, turns, and begins walking to the only car parked on our side of the Square.

“If you'd just go down to the VA hospital,” I say. “M. says they called you two weeks ago.”

“M. says
,” she says as she unlocks and opens her car door. “You and I both know whoever called me was someone M. convinced to call me and
pretend to be from the VA hospital. You know it wasn't really the hospital calling, and you know M.'s father isn't a patient there, just like you know M.'s father didn't really write those letters from Iraq. You know it's just like M. to mess with me like this. You
know
all that.”

“Listen,” I say, “I've
seen
the guy in the VA hospital.”

“You saw T.?” she asks. M.'s mother cocks her head, and her eyes get wide. For the first time, it seems possible that she might be able to believe that I could be telling the truth about M.'s dad. “You're sure it was T.?”

“Well, I didn't actually get to read his ID bracelet before the guards kicked me out of his room,” I admit. “But it certainly
might
have been M.'s father.” M.'s mother closes her eyes and shakes her head, and then when she opens her eyes they are small and black, and once again she looks like a woman who doesn't believe anyone is capable of telling her the truth about anything. “If M.'s dad isn't in the VA hospital,” I say, “then where is he?”

“Who knows?” M.'s mother says. “He's probably in another town, in another bar, watching another football game.” Before I can say anything to that, M.'s mother says, “Good-bye,” then throws her briefcase onto the front passenger seat of her car.

“What can I do to make you believe me?” I ask.

M.'s mother turns to answer. Her face is blank, impassive; she looks like someone who doesn't care, or like someone who very much doesn't want to care, or like someone who very much wants you to believe she doesn't care. In any case, M.'s mother looks at me the way you look at someone when you don't intend to see him again; she looks at me, I'm certain, the way she looked at her husband ______ months ago, when he said he maybe should go to Iraq, too. She looks at me in a way that people probably looked at Exley right before he got drunk so he could forget the way that people looked at him, or the way they looked at him right after he got drunk so he could forget that people looked at him that way.

“Nothing,” she says, and then gets into her car and heads toward home. I watch as her car turns onto Washington Street. The moment it is out of sight, I feel drunk—too drunk, considering that I haven't had any vodka in ______ hours, but not nearly drunk enough, considering how drunk I need to be.

 

 

I
t was seven thirty. I was sitting in the kitchen when Harold knocked on the door. I let him in. He was holding a library book; I could see the tag on its spine. The book went
bang
when he dropped it on the counter. I picked it up and read the title on the cover:
Misfit: The Strange Life of Frederick Exley
. I knew it was something I wasn't going to want to read. Harold knew it, too. That's why he wasn't talking: he was going to let the book do all the talking for him.

“Shut up, Harold,” I said. And then he hit me! Harold actually hit me; he reached over the counter and punched me right in the mouth, with his fist! I couldn't believe it! I tasted blood, and so I put my hand over my mouth and spat and then took my hand away and saw that I'd spat out a tooth. I ran my tongue around and found a space where my left front tooth used to be. The space felt fleshy and weird against my tongue; it felt like I was putting my tongue someplace where it wasn't supposed to be. I couldn't believe I'd finally lost my tooth. I'd waited so long to lose one. Even before I'd been promoted to seventh grade, I'd been the only one in my class not to have lost a tooth. Now I didn't see what the big deal was. The tooth was so small, too small even to be gross. It didn't look like anything anyone would give you money for. It made me sad to look at it. So I tossed it in the garbage. Then I looked up at Harold. But he was gone. That made me much sadder than the tooth. I had other teeth. But Harold had been my only friend for so long, and I knew now he wasn't anymore.

After a few seconds I looked at the book again. It was written by someone named Jonathan Yardley. I sat there and read it cover to cover. This is some of what I learned: Exley had written two other books after
A Fan's Notes
, books I'd never heard of and books that this Yardley guy
(and everyone else, apparently) didn't think too much of; he had two sisters, and a brother who was dead, and he also had two ex-wives and two daughters, not sons; his mother had died not too long ago and had been buried next to Exley's father. As far as I knew, all of that could have been true. Yardley also claimed that Exley was a drunk and a moocher, which was probably also true. But there was at least one thing in the book that wasn't true: that Exley was dead. When Yardley wrote on page xx of the prologue that “Fred died at age sixty-three,” I assumed it was a typo and, after the initial shock, didn't pay it much attention until I reached
page 249
, the second-to-last page, on which Yardley wrote, “At nine thirty in the morning, June 17, 1992, Fred died.”