I Am the Cheese (12 page)
Authors: Robert Cormier
“Don’t mind my lady,” the man says. “She’s not herself these days.”
I climb into the backseat of the car after putting the bike into the back of the station wagon. The woman darts a quick look at me and sniffs, her face pinched, her nose wrinkled. The smell of liniment fills the air, not locker-room liniment but sickroom liniment.
“I’m not very comfortable with strangers in my car, Arnold,” she says. And the man shakes his head and murmurs, “Now, Edna, poor boy’s had a fall and needs a ride. That’s all.”
The car bumps along, slow, about twenty miles an hour, and speeds up a bit once going up a hill, and the woman says, “Not too fast, Arnold, not too fast.”
I close my eyes and let the minutes pass, let myself coast, let my body relax. I begin to feel nauseous. I have never been carsick in my life but now my stomach bounces with the movement of the car and I am afraid I will have to vomit. I look out the window at the passing scene. We are entering a town: Fleming, probably. That is my next stop and I think that maybe I should get out in Fleming and get some Alka-Seltzer in a drugstore. But I think of pedaling all the way from Fleming to Hookset and I tell myself, Hold on, hold on.
I begin to sing to myself, silently so that the man and woman won’t hear me:
The farmer in the dell
,
The farmer in the dell
,
Heigh-ho, the merry-o
,
The farmer in the dell …
I sing and I think of the motel waiting in Belton Falls and how a good night’s sleep will soothe my body and restore my energy and how tomorrow I will see my father in Rutterburg.
The wife takes the child
,
The wife takes the child
,
Heigh-ho, the merry-o
,
The wife takes the child …
It is pleasant now, drifting and singing, my stomach not churning anymore and the car purring smoothly, and then I hear the man say, “Well, we’re here, son …”
I must have fallen off to sleep because we are on a busy street, traffic heavy, neon signs pulsing in the gathering dusk.
“Is this Hookset?” I ask, surprised at the quick passage of time.
“Do you think we’d lie?” the woman asks, sniffing again.
“Now, Edna,” the man says.
He stops the car and I get ready to leave. I gather my package and the road map. My stomach is nauseous again but I figure I will go into the first drugstore I see and order an Alka-Seltzer. I open the door and the sounds of the city grow in my ears, as if someone has turned on the volume.
The man gets out of the car to help me with the bike and he says, “I hope you get there all right, boy. You look kind of green around the gills there. Better get some rest before moving on.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I appreciate it very much.”
He pats me on the shoulder and goes back to the car and I look around for a drugstore. Despite my stomach, I am glad to be in Hookset because it is only a short distance now to Rutterburg, Vermont.
| TAPE OZK011 | 0915 | date deleted T-A |
| A : | My arm hurts. My body hurts. All those needles. |
| T : | I am sorry. I shall ask them to shift the area of penetration. You realize it was necessary, don’t you? You retreated completely. We had to take drastic measures. |
| A : | I know. |
| T : | You do understand, then? |
| A : | I don’t understand anything, really. Why I’m here. How I got here. |
| T : | That’s what we’re attempting to learn. That’s why we are going through—all this. (8-second interval.) |
| T : | It’s possible that you went into retreat because you were getting close to remembering—and there will be pain in the remembering. You realize that, don’t you? It’s possible that the gray man represents the key and at the last moment you refused to use the key, afraid of what would be lurking beyond the door the key would open. (5-second interval.) |
| A : | I know who the gray man is now. I think I know everything. |
| T : | Everything? |
| A : | I think so— |
| T : | Then tell me. Get it out. Begin anywhere but tell it, expel it. Who was this gray man? |
| A : | He was part of our lives and yet not part of it. He was always there, someone I took for granted. Let me explain it this way: My father told me about a mystery story a long time ago, it was called “The Invisible Man.” Not the invisible man they made a movie out of but another one. It was a murder story, I guess. Anyway, the cops were all watching the street, waiting for the killer to arrive, to strike. And the killer did arrive but nobody saw him. Later on, they discovered that the killer was the mailman, he had calmly walked down the street and no one had noticed him because he was like part of the scenery. He was so commonplace that he was invisible. That’s the way the gray man was in our lives. |
| T : | How often did he enter your life? |
| A : | He came to our house once or twice a month. All those years. Usually on the weekend, Saturdays mostly. He’d ring the bell and immediately my mother would go up to her room and my father and the gray man would go down to the cellar. |
| T : | The cellar? |
| A : | I thought I’d told you—there was a room down there my father had paneled, finished off as a sort of recreation room and office. He and the gray man would go down there. For about an hour maybe. I never went down there with them. Then the man would leave. |
| T : | And why did you call him the gray man? |
| A : | That’s the funny thing—his name was Grey. At least, my father called him that. But he also seemed like a gray man to me. |
| T : | And why was that? Was he addicted to gray clothes? |
| A : | Not really. But there was something—gray about him. His hair was gray. But more than that: to me, gray is a nothing color and that’s how Mr. Grey seemed to me. Like nothing. |
| T : | So, he came to your house all those years and you were never curious about him or suspicious? |
| A : | Oh, there was nothing to be suspicious about. My father had told me Mr. Grey was supervisor of the New England branch of the insurance company that employed him. He said they had to draw up confidential reports and such. And I accepted the explanation, of course. I had no reason to doubt my father back then. I mean, Mr. Grey had been a presence in our lives, part of the scenery, part of the house—like the furniture. There was nothing to be suspicious about, until I became suspicious of everything. |
| T : | And when did you become suspicious of everything? |
| A : | After that phone call, when I overheard my mother talking to that woman who was my aunt. A secret aunt. I could overlook the two birth certificates. That could have been some kind of mistake. But not this woman. She was real. |
| T : | Why didn’t you confront your parents about the woman? (6-second interval.) |
| A : | Because I was in a panic. Trying to pretend it never happened, that I hadn’t heard the telephone call. I also knew that I would have to confess how I’d spied on my mother, listened in on her conversation. I kept telling myself that there had to be a logical explanation. I knew they loved me and I had to trust their love, believe in them. So I was in a panic and I felt guilty and I found it hard to look either my mother or my father in the face. And then that particular Saturday arrived— |
| T : | Tell me … |
He had been waiting for a telephone call from Amy Hertz. The night before she had told him that she was planning a Number at St. Jude’s Church the following day. Something to do with a wedding.
Adam had been appalled at the prospect, losing the cool he always tried to display to Amy.
“Listen, Amy, you’re not going to desecrate a church, are you? Or invade somebody’s wedding?” he asked.
“Of course not, dear Ace. Merely a little diversion. And don’t worry. The church itself isn’t involved. The parking lot—that’s our area of concentration.” She refused to explain further. “I’ll call you in the morning. The wedding isn’t until two in the afternoon.”
Thus he was hanging around the house, both hoping for and dreading Amy’s call, when Mr. Grey rang the doorbell. Adam opened the front door. Mr. Grey looked as grim and bleak and—as gray as usual. He seldom wasted time with polite greetings, murmuring “My boy” to Adam and entering the house briskly, as if being chased by the wind. Adam heard the bedroom door being closed by his mother upstairs. His father came forward from the back of the house. Years ago, Mr. Grey brought Adam occasional gifts—toy boats, bats, balls. Now he barely glanced at Adam.
Adam stepped aside. Mr. Grey and his father headed, as usual, for the cellar stairs. Adam watched them, curious about Mr. Grey for the first time. If he had an aunt somewhere out there hidden from him, could Mr. Grey be an uncle? He dismissed the thought as absurd.
Restless, bored, he prowled the rooms, waiting for Amy’s call. He realized that more and more he had become dependent on Amy to fill his hours, to fill his life. Adam’s shyness had always prevented him from making easy friendships. He wasn’t capable of intimacy with others—he didn’t dare confess his hopes and desires to others, his longing to be a famous writer. He thought people would either laugh or scoff. Strangely enough, Amy Hertz, whose goal in life seemed to be only laughter and mischief, had turned out to be the person with whom he was comfortable, with whom he could share his dreams. He kept few secrets from her. And he wondered sometimes if he should tell her about all his doubts—the birth certificates and now the secret aunt. He was
afraid, of course, that she’d tell him he was losing his mind.
He thought of Mr. Grey in the recreation room below. What a square, a stuffed shirt, he thought. He considered what a target Mr. Grey would make for one of Amy’s Numbers. Amy had driven Mr. Crandall, a hated teacher, up the wall a few weeks ago by sending him anonymous love letters, passionate letters obviously from a student. The Amy Hertz touch: giving the letters a definite masculine tone so that poor Mr. Crandall thought he was being pursued by a passionate teenage homosexual.
I, too, am capable of mischief, Adam thought. And he went to the cellar door. He listened. Nothing. He opened the door and went down the stairs. The door to the recreation room was closed. Adam walked stealthily toward the door, almost on tiptoe. He placed his ear against it, listening shamelessly. Nothing. The place must be soundproof, he thought. It struck him then that the recreation room was almost like a vault; he had always felt mildly claustrophobic in the room. His father had sealed off the cellar windows, completely paneling the walls and ceilings. “When I want privacy, I get privacy,” he had joked. But had he really been joking?
Adam’s ear was warm against the wood of the door.
At that moment, he heard the knob turn.
Adam swiveled around and withdrew into the shadows.
His father emerged, in silhouette. Adam flattened himself against the wall. Had his father seen him? Had he heard him outside the door?
His father paused now, said something to Mr. Grey that Adam was too flustered to hear—his heart beating loudly in his body—and crossed the cellar. He went up the steps.
Adam heard him proceed through the rooms upstairs, his steps echoing in the ceiling. There was no sound from Mr. Grey in the recreation room. Adam was afraid that the thud of his heart could be heard, like the heart in that Edgar Allan Poe story. His father came back down the stairs. He did not look in Adam’s direction. He didn’t seem upset or rushed. He closed the door, shutting out the ray of light. And Adam allowed himself to relax, to sag against the wall. He was drenched with perspiration. He made his way slowly and quietly up the stairs.
| T : | Is that all? |
| A : | No. |
| T : | Take your time, now. I see you are perspiring. There are Kleenexes there. Help yourself. |
| A : | Thank you. (10-second interval.) |
| T : | And had your father seen you at the door downstairs? |
| A : | Yes. But I didn’t know that right away. I suspected that he had. When he and Mr. Grey finally came upstairs from the cellar, my father glanced at me in a strange way, suspicious. But he didn’t say anything. I found that I didn’t want to confront him. I told my father I was going to Amy Hertz’s house. But I didn’t leave. I went out to the garage and sat there on the workbench. I was in a panic. I was in a panic because I’m not built for subterfuge and deception. I sat there feeling terrible, ashamed of myself for spying on my parents. I knew they loved me, that there was a logical explanation for everything. So I went back in the house, looking for my father. To apologize. He wasn’t in sight. I looked through the downstairs rooms. He wasn’t there. I went upstairs. The door to their bedroom was still closed. I approached the door, intending to knock and then go inside and make a clean breast of everything I had done. Then I heard their voices. And that changed everything. Forever. (10-second interval.) |
| T : | And what did you hear? |
| A : | It’s funny. It was like that frantic whispering on that night long ago. I heard my father’s voice. He was saying, “He’s becoming suspicious—he was listening at the cellar door. He was trying to hear what Thompson and I were saying.” For a minute, I thought he was talking about someone else altogether, another situation altogether, and I was relieved. I didn’t know any Thompson. Then I heard my mother say, “He should stop coming here. And he should use his own name in the first place. Grey—Thompson—all these years we called him Grey and now he’s someone else. These ridiculous games he plays …” There was anger in my mother’s voice. I had never heard anger there before. My father said, “He’s probably got a thousand names—that’s how he survives. That’s what helps us to survive.” And my mother said, with the anger gone now and the old sadness in her voice again, “That’s just what we’re doing: surviving, not living.” (7-second interval.) |
| T : | Go ahead. Use the Kleenex again. (12-second interval.) |
| A : | Then my father said, “We have to do something, Louise. He isn’t a child anymore. Didn’t you say you thought he might have been listening the other night when you talked with Martha?” I didn’t hear her reply. And then I heard my father say, “No matter what Grey—Thompson—says, it’s time to do something about Adam.” And I shivered there in the hallway … (8-second interval.) |
| T : | It’s all clear now, isn’t it? |
| A : | Yes. |
| T : | Do you wish to rest awhile or do you want to go on with it? |
| A : | Let’s go on with it. |
