Exley (40 page)

So I opened my eyes. My dad was lying on the bed.
His
eyes were still closed, but he had a smile on his face. A big smile. Exley was smiling at me, too, I think. His lips stretched in a pleased way before he stuck another cigarette between them.

“You made my dad smile!” I said, but Exley was already up and walking out of the room. I turned back to my dad. He wasn't smiling anymore, but he was breathing deeply as he slept. He looked happy, peaceful. I put my hand on his forehead. It didn't feel cold or slick or hot or anything. It felt like a normal person's forehead. I took
A Fan's Notes
off the bedside table and was about to start reading the end of the book, the part I hadn't read yet. But then I didn't. I didn't need to read it to him anymore. My dad could read it to me when he got better. Because now I knew he would get better. Everything would be all right. Exley had shown me that everything would be all right.

Just then, I heard a woman's voice in the hall saying, “Sir, sir, you can't smoke in here.” And then, much louder, “Hey, did you hear what I said? You cannot
do
that in this hospital!”

I got up and poked my head into the hallway. I didn't see Exley, but I did spot a nurse at the far end. You could pretty much see the fumes coming off her. I ducked back into the room and walked over to my dad. His face looked less peaceful than before, and his breathing was much shallower. Everything about the room was different. On Saturday mornings, when Mother was at work and my dad was hungover and in bed, I used to climb into bed with him. He'd say, without opening his eyes, “Tell
me something.” And I'd tell him about something, something I'd done the day before or something I wanted to do later that day, something that had happened at school, something I'd read in one of my books. I did that, right then, in his hospital room. Even though I was still wet from the snow, I climbed into his bed, put my head on his chest, and told him everything. I told him I'd finally found Exley, or at least he'd found me. Then I admitted what my dad already knew: That I'd read
A Fan's Notes
even though he had told me not to and that was I so sorry. That even though I thought it was the best book in the world and it had changed my life, I was so sorry I had done what I'd promised him I wouldn't. But I also told him that while I was sorry I'd broken my promise, I wasn't sorry I'd read the book. Because I loved it the first time I read it, and I'd loved it even more every time I'd read it since. Then I told my dad about K., how I'd eaten her cookies in my head, although that was over now; and I also told him that I knew he'd been with her, in real life, and how I hoped it was over with them, too. Also, I told him he could stop lying about teaching at JCCC. Because where or if he worked didn't matter to me and had never mattered to me, and maybe it wouldn't matter to Mother, either, now that she'd know he really had gone to Iraq. Then I told my dad that I was proud of him for getting off the davenport and joining the army and going to Iraq, and I also told him that I thought it was selfish and stupid and cowardly and that it was the worst thing he ever did and that I hated him for it, but that I still loved him so much. I told him that when we got home, he could read the end of
A Fan's Notes
to me, that I'd been saving it for him, that I wanted us to finish the book together. I kept talking and talking for a long, long time, not getting tired, not ever wanting to stop, until I heard someone walk into the room. I picked my head off my dad's chest and saw it was Exley.

“My dad is dead,” I told him, sitting up in bed.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“My dad is
dead
,” I told him. “It didn't work.”

Exley didn't seem to have anything to say about that. I reached over, grabbed his book off the bedside table, and waved it at him. “It didn't work,” I told him again, and then threw the book at him. Exley caught the book and held it to his chest. Except of course he wasn't Exley. He wasn't
even Dr. Pahnee. He was the first doctor, Dr. ______. “It's all your fault,” I said, even though I knew it wasn't. “You were a terrible Exley.”

“I'm so sorry, Miller,” Dr. ______ said.

“I bet even Yardley didn't believe you were Exley,” I said. “I bet he just pretended to because you told him about my dad and he felt sorry for me.” I put my head back down on my dad's chest and glared at Dr. ______. “I bet Yardley didn't even believe my dad really had gone to Iraq any more than he believed you were really Exley.”

“Miller …,” Dr. ______ started to say, but I wasn't listening to him. Because suddenly I had an idea. After all, I had lied about Dr. ______ being Dr. Pahnee and then Exley. Suppose I had also lied about my dad being my dad? Suppose everything everyone else had been saying about him and me were true? I closed my eyes one last time.
Please don't be my dad
, I said to my dad in my head. I tried to imagine that everyone was right, that the guy next to me was not actually my dad; I tried to imagine that he was just some random soldier I pretended was my dad. I tried to imagine that what Dr. ______ and Mother had been saying all along was true. I tried to imagine my dad at that moment with K. in her house, wherever that was. I tried to imagine him with some other woman, lying on some other woman's davenport in some other woman's house in some other town. I tried to imagine my dad drinking vodka Presbyterians at the Crystal or at some other bar at that very moment.
It's not working
, my head told me.
I can't imagine that. I just can't
. And then I told my head,
But can you imagine he's dead? Can you imagine what life will be like if this really is your dad and he really is dead
?

I opened my eyes, hopped off the bed, and walked toward Dr. ______. I must have had a scary expression on my face, because he took a step backward and put Exley's book up in front of him like a shield.

“I don't know how to tell you this, Dr. ______,” I said, “but I've been lying to you and to everyone else. This isn't who I said it was.”

“Oh, Miller,” Dr. ______ said, his voice full of something—pity or disappointment, I couldn't tell which. “I know it's your dad. I read his bracelet.”

“I made that myself!” I said. I could hear how wild and unreliable my voice sounded. So I took a breath, then another, and then said as calmly as
I could, “The bracelet is a fake, just like the letters, just like the call from the hospital, just like everything.”

“Miller,” Dr. ______ said. “It's too late. Your dad is dead and you can't bring him back. This is only going to make things worse. Please don't do this.”

“I'm sorry, but it's true,” I said. “This is not my dad.”

 

 

I
ran out of the hospital, and Dr. ______ ran after me, and for a little while we just stood there on Washington Street. It was still snowing like crazy. There was no wind. There were no snowplows or snow shovelers or snowblowers yet. There was just snow. The trees were bending under the weight of it; the roads were covered with it. People walking in and out of the hospital kept looking up at the falling snow and shaking their heads and laughing, like they just couldn't believe it. “It's only November!” they kept saying. They sounded happy, the way they wouldn't five months from now when they'd be saying, “It's fuckin' April!” Then they walked into the hospital, or into the snow, and disappeared. You couldn't see anything clearly except the snow—not the buildings, not the guys smoking outside the YMCA, not the Public Square. I'd never, ever seen Watertown look so beautiful. I thought of the man I'd pretended was my dad, the man who was dead in the VA hospital. I knew what the minister would say at his funeral; I knew I was supposed to feel grateful to the man. But I didn't feel grateful. I felt so sad and lonely for him. Because he would never see how beautiful Watertown was in the snow. He would never know about Exley; he would never know that I'd read
A Fan's Notes
to him in the hospital. He would never even know who I was or who I wanted him to be. He would never know that if I couldn't find my dad and persuade Mother to let him come home, I would have been proud to have him be my dad. He would never know how good a dad he might have been to me, how good a son I might have been to him. He would never know what life would have been like if he hadn't gone to Iraq in reality but had just gone there in my head instead.

“Are you going to help me look for my dad?” I asked Dr. ______, but it didn't seem like he was listening to me. He was peering through the snow
at someone walking toward us across Washington Street. “Oh my lord,” he said when the person got a little closer.

“What?” I said, but by then I could see who it was, too: it was Mother. This was Thursday, and she was wearing her Thursday clothes: a long black skirt and a black blazer and a black overcoat. My dad always told Mother on Thursdays that she looked like she was going to a funeral. When I remembered that, my throat felt all of a sudden full, like when you eat something too quickly and aren't able to swallow every bit of it. To make the feeling go away, I started talking really fast: about how the guy inside the VA hospital was dead, but that it was OK, because she was right, he wasn't my dad, I had lied about that, I had made that up, just like I had made up those letters, just like I had made up everything until now. “I know my dad has done some bad things,” I told her. “I know he's hurt you, like I've hurt you. I know he's lied to you, like I've lied to you. But at least he isn't dead. At least he didn't go out and die on us. I don't want him to. I don't want him to be like the guy in the VA hospital. I don't want him to die somewhere far away from home without us. I know you don't love him the way I love him. But he's my only dad. He's the only one I want. Please let me and Dr. ______ try to find him. Please let him come home.”

My mom listened to me talk like a deaf person would: she watched my mouth, not my eyes. When I was done talking, she hugged me. “Oh, Miller, I can't believe you finally lost a tooth,” my mom said to my shoulder. “On your birthday, too.”

“I know,” I said. I didn't want to mention that Harold had knocked it out, because I didn't want her to stop hugging me. For the first time, I felt like I needed her, the way I'd always needed my dad. But she did stop hugging me finally. She stood up and smiled weakly at Dr. ______, who smiled weakly back. It was like they hadn't expected to run into each other here and were sad about that.

“What are you doing here anyway?” I asked.

“The VA hospital called me, Miller,” she said. She tried to hug me again, but I wouldn't let her.

“They shouldn't have,” I said. “Like I said, you were right. That guy wasn't my dad. I lied about that. I don't even know who the guy was.”

“You do know,” my mom said. “And you were right about your dad. He did go to Iraq.”

“No, he didn't,” I said. “Stop it.”

“And he didn't go to Iraq because you read Exley's book, either,” she said. She was looking at Dr. ______ now. I wanted him to stop her, to say,
Better not tell him
. Except he couldn't say that, because only Dr. Pahnee said that, and Dr. ______ was Dr. ______, not Dr. Pahnee. Anyway, Dr. ______ didn't say,
Better not tell him
, or anything else. He just nodded,
Go on
, then looked up into the falling snow. “He went to Iraq because he wanted us to be proud of him.”

“But I already was,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “But I wasn't, and he thought I would be if he went. And that's the other reason. He went to Iraq because of K. But K. wasn't one of his students.”

“Stop it,” I said. “What are you
doing
?”

“I'm telling you the truth,” she said, but softly, and not like she wanted to be congratulated for telling it.

“Please don't do that,” I said. I thought that if my mom stopped talking right then, then everything might still be OK: that I would persuade Dr. ______ to pretend to be Exley again, because I thought my dad would like that, and Exley and I would go find my dad and bring him home and that would end up being our truth, and not the truth my mom was trying to tell me. In one truth, I could see my dad, my mom, Exley, and me. But in the other truth, I could see nothing. I don't mean that it was empty. I mean that it was full of everything I couldn't stand to see: my mom, and me, and everyone like us, and all the people, places, and things we couldn't live with or without. “Please don't say anything else,” I told my mom. But she did.

I wouldn't have written this book if I hadn't first read and loved Frederick Exley's great “fictional memoir”
A Fan's Notes
and been convinced that everyone else should read and love it, too; and I couldn't have written this book without the help of Jonathan Yardley's invaluable biography of Exley,
Misfit: The Strange Life of Frederick Exley
. There is a character named Yardley in
Exley
who sometimes speaks in direct quotations from
Misfit;
there is also a character named Exley in
Exley
who (along with other characters) sometimes speaks in direct quotations from
A Fan's Notes
. When this happens, I've punctuated their dialogue like so —“ ‘ . . .' ” — so that there should be no question about the original source. Likewise, when my two first-person narrators quote or paraphrase lines from
A Fan's Notes
, I've labored to make sure that the source is clear, either from the context or by direct reference to the book.

So, thanks to Mr. Yardley, and thanks beyond thanks to the late Mr. Exley and his sisters Fran and Connie; his niece Helen; his nephews Chris, Ed, and Kurt; and all their families, and also to his fellow Watertownians, who were such good hosts to me.