Authors: Robert Cormier
I Am the Cheese (17 page)
She turned from the window. “Even now, we shouldn’t be sitting here talking like this. The only safe place to talk, Grey says, is downstairs in the paneled room. Or outside, away from places that could be bugged. And here again, Adam, we’re doing what Grey tells us. Sometimes I hate him. Fiercely. With a hate that’s almost sinful. And I think, We trust him too much. What would happen if, for once, we defied him?” She shook her head ruefully. “We almost did, once or twice …”
“Tell me about it, Mom.”
“One summer, we decided to take a vacation. The
three of us. We would never leave you behind, of course. I’ve always wanted to go to New Orleans—the Mardi Gras, the jazz your father loves—such a colorful old city. But Grey ruled it out. He said New Orleans was off-limits that year.”
“But why?” Adam asked.
“Because the people your father testified against have strong ties in New Orleans. We almost defied Grey. But we didn’t, of course, because there was too much at stake. Another time, we wanted to go to Europe. But Grey said there would be too much fuss with passports. By fuss, he meant danger. So our hands were tied, Adam. That’s what I mean about Grey—he rules our lives. And that’s why I
do
defy him sometimes, in small ways. Talking like this, without going to the paneled room. And then I worry afterward because I think that I’ve exposed you and your father to danger. I don’t care about myself anymore …”
Adam suddenly felt so sad, so sad.
“And always, Adam, there are the Never Knows. Never knowing who can be trusted. Never knowing who that stranger in town might be. The phone rings and I think, Is this the call I’ve always been afraid of? Have we been discovered? A woman I’ve never seen before glances at me in the supermarket. And I worry. Because you never know. Even Grey. I’m afraid to look at him sometimes. I avoid him, in fact. Because we are at his mercy. He could snap his fingers tomorrow and our lives could change completely again.”
Adam found himself afflicted with his own Never
Knows. He felt safe at home or at school but found himself uneasy when he went downtown or walked the streets. Instinctively, he kept an eye out for strangers, people he had never seen before. He was suddenly acutely conscious of the actions of other people. Was that man heading in his direction? Was someone following too closely behind him? Did the man standing next to him at the newspaper rack in Baker’s Drugstore appear to be studying him? Crazy, Adam told himself. I am the same person I have been for fourteen years. These are the same people I have seen all these years. The only difference was that Adam had never noticed them before. Monument is a city of thirty-three thousand people, he told himself—he had done a study of the city for his social science class at school—and he couldn’t expect to know everyone. Some faces had to be the faces of strangers.
Suddenly, life became unbearably sweet to Adam. Funny, he had taken the events of his life for granted for a long time, the days and nights passing routinely as if they’d continue forever, but the threat to that life and the routines suddenly made every minute and hour precious. Food had never tasted so good before. He’d stop after school to buy a Mister Goodbar or a Three Musketeers and the candy was more delicious than it had ever been. He also loved his father and mother more and wanted to be with them. When they ate dinner together, he felt a sense of intimacy with them, as if he were more than just a son, more than someone who was told to make his bed and take out the rubbish. He was part of them. Somehow fear had forged love.
| T : | So, it was not all nightmare, then, was it? |
| A : | No. There were good times when we were a family together. But sometimes I’d look in the mirror, studying myself, trying to find some remnants of my Italian heritage. Crazy—I’d joke about it—I didn’t even like spaghetti. I’d look in the mirror and pronounce my name, the name I was born with. Paul Delmonte. But I’d only whisper it. Already I was abiding by my father’s rules, by Mr. Grey’s rules. Then there were times when I felt like standing on a rooftop and shouting to the world, “I am Paul Delmonte. I didn’t die in that accident in New York.” I’d think, Poor Paul. As if he had been another person and not me. My father said we had to live in the present, not the past. It was my mother who led me back to the past once. |
| T : | Tell me about that time. |
| A : | It was just a moment, just a glimpse … |
During that period when he was learning about the past, Adam realized that despite her gentleness and wistfulness, his mother was more defiant than his father about their situation. His father played to perfection his role of insurance agent, Rotary Club member, Chamber of Commerce committeeman. Adam marveled at the performance, knowing that it was a performance. His father was always in character; Adam found it hard to believe he had been a crusading newspaperman. (“Well, not exactly crusading—investigative reporting
is mostly monotonous work, digging through thousands of words for the one word that doesn’t ring true.”)
His mother was really the rebel. She often spoke resentfully, almost contemptuously, of Mr. Grey. “I sometimes think we were too unquestioning, Adam, too naive. Did your father really have to give up newspaper work? Weren’t there any other alternatives?” Adam was delighted to see this defiance. He realized that his mother wasn’t the compliant woman he had known before. Although she seldom smiled and sadness clung to her most of the time, she was capable of anger. And deception. One day, she studied Adam’s face as if trying to make up her mind about something. Finally, she said, “Come with me, Adam.”
She led him downstairs but not to the paneled room. There was a shadowy alcove at the other end of the cellar, filled with old furniture and other stuff. Adam recognized old wicker chairs they had used long ago in the summer, in the backyard. His mother waded through this debris of other years, clearing a path to a box tied with old rope, about four feet square, in the corner. Patiently, she untied the rope. She opened the box. Inside the box were blankets neatly folded, blue and white, patchwork quilts. His mother peeled off the blankets, like turning the pages of a book.
“Look,” she said, holding up a jacket that seemed vaguely military. “Your father wore this in the army.” Her probing uncovered a green scarf,
soft, wispy, the material so flimsy that it seemed like fog. “Your father gave me this one Valentine’s Day—he’s always been so sentimental, your father.” She held the scarf to her cheek, closed her eyes. “We had such a wonderful life, Adam—and when you came along, it seemed too good to be true. There are times when I think we had too much and we had to pay for it.” His mother shivered slightly in the dampness of the cellar. She replaced the green scarf in the box and unfolded another blanket. “I suppose I should have thrown these things away a long time ago—they’re relics of that other life and your father says that for the sake of safety, we have to forget that other life. And he’s right, of course. But I cheated. I’ve kept a few things we had when we fled through the night. A pathetically few things—some of your baby things, an old hat your father used to wear …”
“You’re sentimental, too, Mom,” Adam said, glancing into the box, wondering about those baby things of his. Not his, actually, but Paul Delmonte’s.
The doorbell rang upstairs, and his mother stiffened. So did Adam. The bell rang again.
“This is what I hate,” his mother whispered, arranging the blankets in the box again, closing the cover. “This never-knowing. A doorbell rings and it’s like an alarm bell.”
“I’ll go up and see who it is,” Adam volunteered, “while you tie up the box.” And for the first time, Adam got a taste of what it was like for his mother, the deceptions that were a part of her life, and the constant
threat of danger. Even if danger didn’t exist, the possibility existed and this was maybe even worse. As it turned out, Amy was ringing the doorbell.
“It’s only Amy,” Adam called out to his mother, wanting to reassure her that everything was all right.
“What do you mean—
only
Amy?” the girl asked as Adam opened the door. “What kind of hello is that?”
He had been a stranger to Amy during this period. He met her briefly after school and walked home with her, but he made excuses for their not getting together, not carrying out more Numbers. She looked at him quizzically, obviously puzzled, but said nothing. He apologized for not accompanying her on the Number at the church parking lot. Actually, he had been relieved to have avoided the experience.
“That’s okay,” she had said. “I gave you a rain check—we can pull it off at the next wedding.”
One afternoon, as he left her on the corner near her house, she called to him, “Are you all right, Adam? You don’t seem the same these days. Anything bugging you?”
Bugging. He thought of the paneled room downstairs. “No, Amy,” he said. “It’s my mother. She’s not feeling well and I try to spend more time at home.”
Actually, he was in agony. He desperately wanted to share his predicament with Amy—he wanted to share his entire life with her—but his father had sworn him to secrecy. “It’s life and death, Adam,” his father had said.
Life and death …
| T : | There is panic in your eyes again. Did those words—life and death—disturb you? |
| A : | I don’t know. Every once in a while, a dark cloud, something like a dark cloud, crosses my mind. |
| T : | Do specific words or specific thoughts bring the black cloud? |
| A : | Sometimes. But the blankness always brings it. Not always, really. I can stand the blanks sometimes. But other times, there’s terror in the blanks. |
| T : | At this very moment, for instance? |
| A : | Yes. I wonder, What happens next? Or, rather, what happened back then? And I don’t know. I don’t know. Then the terror comes. Yes, that’s when the terror comes. (10-second interval.) |
| T : | You must relax. You must not become agitated. Perhaps a pill. To calm you down. This is merely an anxiety attack. This gasping for breath—this is only anxiety. Try to relax. (5-second interval.) |
| A : | What happened back then? What happened? (10-second interval.) |
| A : | Where’s my father? Where’s my mother? |
| T : | You must calm yourself. |
| A : | What’s happened to them? Where are they? |
| T : | Please, you must control yourself. |
| A : | What’s happening? What’s happening to me now? What’s going on? I feel— |
| T : | I think medication is necessary. I have rung and they are coming. The medicine will calm you, take away the terror. |
| A : | What’s going on? What’s happening? |
| T : | Let us suspend for now. I think it is best. They are arriving— |
| A : | Please— |
| T : | Suspend. |
END TAPE OZK013
I am a spy. I am across the street from the Varney house on Upper Main Street in Hookset, Vermont, and it is dark now and cold and my cap is pulled down over my ears and my hands are stiff with chill as I clutch my father’s package. My body is pressed against a stone wall that divides a Salvation Army building from an abandoned supermarket. Upper Main Street is quiet and the rush hour is over. Occasionally, people pass by the sidewalk, and I can almost reach out and touch their elbows, but they don’t see me. I look across the street and I can see the bike. Or, at least, I can see the handlebars where they stick up above the banister of the front porch. The bike is so near and yet so far. It would be so easy to run up the front walk and grab the bike and then pedal away. But there are always people coming and going at the house. The Varney family is a big family with people of all ages going in and out of the house, as if it’s some kind of boardinghouse. So I wait for the evening to quiet down, for the comings and goings to halt.
At least my headache is gone. I stopped at a drugstore
and bought a small tin of aspirin and then asked the clerk at the soda fountain to pour me a glass of water. I gulped three aspirins and then threw the rest of them in a trash container. I didn’t want to be found with pills on me; how could anyone be sure they were aspirins?—so many pills look alike. I think again of the capsules that I didn’t take this morning but now I’m glad I didn’t take them. I have survived the terrible moments of being without them and my head is clear and my senses alert and I need all the sharpness I can muster to get the bike back. I have to move fast, no wasted motion, and I can’t afford to stumble or hesitate.