Exley (8 page)

“Write what down?”

“Everything that's going on with you and your mother and dad and everything else,” he said.

“Why?”

“There's a lot going on in your life,” he said. “It might help you to keep things straight if you wrote things down.”

“The first doctor told me to write down things I learned from my dad,” I said. “Do you want me to do that, too?”

“If you'd like.”

“Will you read it?”

“Only if you want me to.”

“Beginning when?”

Dr. Pahnee shrugged and said, “Why not begin with what happened today?”

“OK, I guess,” I said. Then I said, again, “Thanks, you were a big help.” I waited for a while, expected him to say, again, what he always said after I thanked him for being a big help. But he didn't say anything. He just kept looking at me in that serious, worried way. It kind of creeped me out. So I turned and made for the stairs again. This time, Dr. Pahnee didn't say anything to stop me.

 

 

A
surprise visit from M. Normally, I would object to a patient's stopping by on a Sunday, unannounced — unannounced and, indeed,
without warning
. Normally, I would explain to the patient that I was in the middle of something and send him/her away. But I've grown quite fond of M. He's become my favorite patient, and not only because of his mother. Possibly because he's told me how to help him, rather than making me figure it out for myself, as is the wont of all my other patients. Possibly because it is a relief to be told what to say and when; possibly because it's sometimes nice — nice and, indeed,
pleasurable
—to not have to sound like oneself all the time. Possibly because the whole charade seems harmless enough: I do not think M. really believes me to be a different doctor; I don't think he really believes that Dr. Pahnee and myself are different people. We are role-playing, that much is clear, although the origin of the name — Dr. Pahnee — remains unclear. But in any case, I am recording my sessions with M., in which I speak as Miller has told me Dr. Pahnee must speak, and during my presentation to the NCMHP, I will juxtapose those tapes with these notes, in which I write as myself. I'm certain the results will be quite revelatory. Regardless, when I find M. standing on my porch, I ask, “Would you like to come in?” as he has instructed me to ask, and he says yes.

As I've documented in entries 5–11, M. and I have fallen into something of a “groove,” professionally speaking: M. tells me what's bothering him and I listen, nonjudgmentally, until he asks me if I should tell his mother any of what he has told me. I always say, “Better not tell her,” as M. has instructed me to say. In this way, I have begun to heal him. It has been a most remarkable process: by my agreeing to just
sit in my chair and listen
, M. will talk — about school, about his father and mother. True, I am no
closer to determining whether M.'s father really is in Iraq, or whether M. truly believes his father is there, or whether he truly believes that any of what he says is true. I am no closer to determining why, if M. is lying, he'd rather believe his father is in mortal danger in Iraq than believe he is not in mortal danger somewhere else. But at least M. has stopped crying. At least he seems to like me. That is progress enough.

Or so I thought until this evening, when M. tells me of a series of most disturbing developments: that he woke up to find his mother crying in the bathroom; that he took this to mean that his father had come home and was in the Veterans Affairs hospital; that he went to the Veterans Affairs hospital and found his father, who, according to the attending nurse, had been there for two weeks already and who'd been in a coma before waking up, briefly, today; that he went to a hotel — a hotel and, indeed, a
motel
— and believed he'd found the Watertownian — I believe his name is
Exley
—who'd authored M.'s father's (and M.'s, too?) aforementioned favorite book; that said Watertownian was “in bad shape” (which I took to mean drunk — drunk and, indeed,
inebriated);
that M. escorted this individual halfway down the Washington Street hill until a man of Asian descent stopped him, revealed to M. the man's true identity (it was not this Exley), and took the man back to the motel; that M. was saddened by this development but not deterred; that M. remains determined to find this Exley; that M. then went to visit a woman named K., a woman M. has visited before. This visit, as with others, seems to have involved only the consumption of baked goods and should seem innocent enough. Still, there is something sinister about it, especially since K. seems to know M.'s father but not his dear mother; in addition, today's visit concluded with K. throwing M. out of her apartment, an ejection M. found most upsetting. At the end of this tale, M. asks me if he should mention any of this to his mother, and I am so stunned I can only say what he's instructed me to say: “Better not tell her.” Although I do request, before M. leaves, that he put all of this down in writing, in the hopes that M. will then let me read what he's written and that what is vague and disturbing in the oral tale will be clearer and innocent on the page.

Nonetheless, I worried — worried and, indeed,
worry
. Who is this man in the Veterans Affairs hospital? Can it really be M.'s father? If so, will M.'s
mother welcome his father back into the family home? Will I be necessary if she does? And this Exley: How far will M. go to find him? What will happen if he does? What will happen if he doesn't? Who is this K.? And why, oh why, was M.'s dear, lovely mother crying in her bathroom, especially if, as M. says, she'd received a call two weeks ago from the VA hospital and already dismissed it as another of M.'s lies?

I hope the good members of the NCMHP won't judge me too harshly for what I do next. I call M.'s mother. She answers on the first ring. I can hear the television set burbling in the background. “M.?” she exclaims. “Where
are
you?” Her voice is a heartbreaking mixture of motherly concern and fury. I am suddenly and completely full of longing: I wish I was M. I wish I was the human male about whom M.'s mother is so worried, the human male she desires to be home with her so she can yell at him. The human male that she loves. I feel terrible: not because M. was at my home when he should have been at his, but because I am not he. I hope the NCMHP won't judge me too harshly for this, either.

“No,” I say, and identify myself.

“Oh,” she replies. Her voice doesn't exactly brighten, but it does become a bit less cloudy. “What do you want?”

“Well,” I begin. I fully intend to tell her everything, even though the NCMHP code of conduct makes clear that we are not to tell our patients' loved ones everything — everything and, indeed,
anything
. I open my mouth, intending to utter the sentence,
M. says he found his dad in the VA hospital
, and then to continue from there. But all I can think of is M.'s mother crying in the bathroom and how whatever I will say will send her back there, weeping. My heart breaks a little at the thought. And I can also hear her coming back to the phone after her cry and wondering how I'd gotten M. to tell me what he'd told me, and me confessing to becoming the doctor M. wanted me to be, rather than the doctor she thought she was paying for, and how furious at me she'd be, and not out of love and worry, either. And my heart breaks a little more. So I don't say anything. I just sit there, in my living room, with my mouth open, breathing like a masher into the phone receiver.

“What is it?” M.'s mother asks. I can hear the panic creeping into her voice. “Is it about M.?”

“No!” I say. Because I would have said anything not to say the things I'd been prepared to say, the things that would break her heart and mine. I will do anything not to break our hearts, including doing what I'd said, to myself, I wouldn't: I will be a private detective. I will snoop around and try to learn something about K. and about the man in the VA hospital. I will even read this Exley's book. I will not tell M.'s mother about any of this unless I have to. But for now, I have to say something. So I say, “It would be my honor if you'd accompany me to the North Country Mental Health Professionals' annual meeting and dinner on Thursday.”

This seems to give M.'s mother some pause. She doesn't say anything for quite some time. After a while, I can't even hear her breathe, and wonder if she's hung up or passed out. Finally, she says, “You mean, like a date?”

My heart wants to say,
Yes, yes, exactly like a date!
But as a mental health professional, I am trained to ignore my heart. Instead I say, “I'm the keynote speaker.”

“Oh,” she says. In the background, I can hear a door slam, and then nothing but dial tone. I can only assume — assume and, indeed,
surmise
— that M.'s mother has hung up on me. I push the Off button on my phone and then sit on my couch and replay our conversation mentally. What have I said that was so wrong? And will I be given a chance to make it right again? I am still asking myself these questions twenty minutes later when the phone rings. I pick it up. It is M.'s mother.

“Ask me again,” she whispers.

There is no doubt that she's referring to “our date.” But I don't want to make another mistake, if, indeed, I've already made one. So I ask her to clarify. “Would you like me to ask you the same question I asked you in our earlier conversation, using the same words?” I say. “Or would you like me to ask you the same question but in a different way?”

“Jesus Christ,” she whispers.
“Just ask me out again
.” I can hear the urgency in her whisper. I don't want her to hang up on me once more. So I ask her, again, to accompany me to the NCMHP annual meeting on Thursday. I use the same rhetoric as before. I even tell her that I'm the keynote speaker, in case she's forgotten.

“That sounds nice,” she whispers, and then she once again hangs up.

 

 

F
ifteen minutes later, I was home: 22 Thompson Boulevard. I stowed my bike in the garage, walked through the garage door, through the breezeway, through the kitchen door, into the kitchen, which was empty.

It was a quarter of seven, dinnertime, but Mother wasn't in the kitchen making it. My dad was the one who always made dinner; Mother was the one who ate one, maybe two bites of whatever he made, then left the table and went back to reading something for work, back to business, leaving my dad standing there, looking wistful with his apron and ladle. I walked through the kitchen, into the living room. It was dark except for the flickering TV. Mother was sitting on the couch, watching the TV. Her legs were curled up underneath her and to the side. She was holding a glass with a little brown liquid left in it. The portable phone was next to her on the couch, mouth and ear pieces facing up. I sat down in the easy chair to her right and looked at the TV. She was watching the news.

“I'm home,” I said.

“Where have you been?” Mother asked. She sipped from her glass and looked at me out of the corners of her eyes, which were still red. It had been nine hours since I'd left the house that morning, and still Mother's eyes were red; I wondered how long she'd been crying.

“Out riding my bike,” I said.

“Your bike?” Mother asked. She turned her head toward me and gave me her lawyer look, daring me to tell her something she'd know wasn't true.

“What?” I said. “It's true.” Because it was, mostly.

“You were riding your bike in the snow?”

“What snow?” I said, and then looked out our bay windows, toward the
street. It was snowing. Big flakes twirling and drifting in the floodlights. It was the first snow of the year. There is nothing more hopeful than the first snow of the year, and suddenly, everything seemed possible. I walked over to the liquor cabinet, brought back the bottle of Early Times. I poured some of the bourbon into Mother's glass, put the bottle on the table in front of her. Because sometimes Mother became less of a lawyer, less of a mother, when she drank more than her usual one glass of Early Times.

“Thanks,” she said. But she didn't pick up the glass and drink from it. She was too busy watching the news. The local news guy had interrupted the national news guy. Two soldiers from Fort Drum had been killed in Iraq. That made twelve total in November and the month wasn't even half over. The local news guy kept calling them “the latest fatalities.” Then he stopped talking and disappeared from the screen, and the two soldiers took his place: their faces, their names, their hometowns, their ranks. They were both white guys; one guy looked like he could still have been in high school; the other guy was older, like he could have been the younger guy's high school teacher. Their hair was bristly and short, and they were smiling widely, like they liked their haircuts.

“Oh,” Mother said to the TV. She put her hands over her face and then mumbled something else. I couldn't hear what it was, but it didn't sound happy, and I wondered if she was going to start crying again.
It's OK
, I wanted to tell her.
Those guys are dead, but my dad isn't. My dad is in the VA hospital, and he's in bad shape, and I know you know that because you were crying this morning. Even though you didn't believe it when the VA hospital called two weeks ago, and even though the hospital didn't call you this morning, you must have found out this morning somehow that my dad really is in the hospital because you were crying in the bathroom. But you don't have to cry, because at least he's not dead. At least he's alive, and he's going to get better and then he's going to come home to us. But I need you to help me get him better, get him home. If you don't help me, then I still have this plan, but it involves finding Exley, and I don't know if I can do it. Honestly, the plan scares me a little. Please help me get my dad home; please save me from my plan
. But I knew I couldn't say any of those things until Mother admitted she knew that my dad was in the VA hospital, and
if she admitted that, then she'd also have to admit that she'd been wrong about my dad going to Iraq and that I was right. And I knew she wouldn't admit any of that. We were like an old married couple: neither of us would admit we were wrong unless we were presented with proof that we were wrong. That meant I'd have to bring my dad to Mother; I wouldn't be able to get Mother to come to him.