After our meeting, I open the front door to let M. out. I am about to exclaim our newly agreed-upon good-bye when I see the patient’s mother sitting on the porch railing. I have not seen her since our first session, and my arm and arm hair tingle wildly. She and I exchange conventional greetings. She kisses her son on the top of the head and then asks him if he wouldn’t mind waiting in the car, just for a second. M. walks to the car; as he does so, he looks at me over his shoulder. I know how to read his look, and I look back, to tell him I will not betray his confidences. When he is in the car, M.’s mother asks, “How’s it going?”
“Not well,” I answer truthfully. I do not want to tell her the rest of the truth — that we’ve had something of a breakthrough today — because then she will ask for details about the breakthrough and I fear I will tell her.
“Oh,” she says. She looks sadly at the car. Her sadness seems genuine. This is not my area of expertise, exactly, but I believe her to be a good mother. I almost touch her on the arm as she touched me on the arm, to console her. But I fear that my touch won’t tingle her arm as hers tingled mine, and how unbearably sad that would be. She looks back at me. She is still sad about M. Sad, she is still beautiful. “Do you think there’s anything else you could do?” she asks.
“Such as?” I ask. I genuinely want to know. Please help me, I almost say but don’t, as it would be unprofessional in a mental health professional.
“You’ve already read. ” And she names the book with which M.’s father was obsessed, causing, I believe, his son’s obsession, although M. claims not even to have read the book, let alone be obsessed with it. I glanced at the first chapter, and so I know the book is of local origin. Or at least the author is “from around here” (I myself am from Rochester, a veritable metropolis when compared to Watertown). But other than that, I haven’t read the book. I almost tell M.’s mother that and then suggest she read my article in the official proceedings from last year’s North Country Mental Health Professionals’ meeting, which suggests that whereas in the past, people turned to literature to improve their lives, they now turn to their mental health professionals. But clearly she expects me already to have read the book, especially since she gave me a copy of the book after M.’s last session. So I say, “I have read the book.” I try to make my voice as noncommittal as possible, but M.’s mother hears something in it — perhaps what she wants to hear — and says, “I know, it’s awful.” M.’s mother sighs, through her nose, and it sounds light and musical. It is my professional opinion that mental health professionals should never, ever use the word “crazy” to describe their patients, or anyone else for that matter. But it occurs to me that M.’s father must be crazy — crazy and, indeed, insane — to leave someone like M.’s mother. “I worry so much about M.,” she says. “Do you have any other ideas?”
“I have a few ideas,” I say, again noncommittally. M.’s mother waits, I believe for me to list the ideas. When I do not, she says: “Well, do you think you should follow M. or something?”
“Follow him?” I say. I try not to sound offended, although I am. Because I don’t want M.’s mother to think I’m a man who is easily offended. Unless she likes men, or mental health professionals, who are easily offended. “I am a mental health professional, not a private detective.”
M.’s mother doesn’t reply. She just looks at me with her deep, deep black eyes. M. has described to me these eyes and their effect. I believe that M.’s mother respects me for standing my professional ground. I also believe that I will end up being a private detective, if that’s what M.’s mother really wants me to be.
The Woman Who Was Definitely Not My Mother
About halfway down the Washington Street hill a pickup truck pulled over to the shoulder and stopped in front of Exley and me. The driver’s-side door opened and an Indian got out. I don’t mean an American Indian; I mean an Indian from India. I’d seen an Indian before, of course, and of course I’d also seen a pickup truck, but I don’t think I’d ever seen an Indian driving a pickup truck. Maybe that’s why I just stood there like a doofus, staring at the Indian, who was staring at Exley, but not like a doofus.
“Where do you think you’re goin’ with my vacuum cleaner?” he finally said. He didn’t have an Indian accent, either; he sounded like most any white guy from Watertown. He sounded a little like Exley would probably sound once he started talking again. But for now, Exley still wasn’t talking, not to me, and he didn’t answer the Indian’s question, either: he just put his head down and leaned a little more heavily on his vacuum cleaner.
“I’m taking him home,” I said.
“That’s fine,” the Indian said to me. “But the vacuum cleaner comes back with me to the motel. And if he wants to keep his job, he needs to come with me, too. If he doesn’t, he can go home with you. Entirely up to him.” The Indian took a step closer to Exley and said to him, in a louder voice, “You understand me, S.?”
“S.?” I said, a bad feeling bubbling up from my stomach and into my throat. “His name’s not S. It’s Exley.” But neither of them seemed to hear me. The Indian turned and walked back toward his truck, and the guy who I’d been thinking was Exley but who was apparently just a guy named S. followed him, still pushing his vacuum cleaner. “Don’t go,” I whispered to S. What I really meant was, Don’t do this to me. Don’t do this to my dad. Don’t be S. Be Exley. But S. probably knew what everyone knows: that the only time you say “Don’t go” to someone is if it’s too late and he’s already gone. Anyway, he went; he didn’t even look at me to say good-bye or apologize with his eyes for letting me think he was one guy when in fact he was another. When they got to the truck, the Indian took the vacuum cleaner away from him and chucked it into the bed of the truck. S. staggered around the truck and got in the passenger’s side. The Indian got in the driver’s side. His window was open; unlike S., he looked at me one last time, like he expected me to say something. I was so mad at him because he’d turned Exley back into S. and he’d done it so fast, without seeming to care at all about what it would do to me or my dad, and so I said, “I’ve never seen an Indian drive a pickup truck.”
“I’m from Pakistan, dude,” he said. “Or at least my parents are.” And then he started the truck, hung a U-turn, and headed back up Washington Street, toward the New Parrot. I watched them until they crested the hill and were gone. I was sad, of course, that S. was S. and not Exley. But I shouldn’t have been. Because it was my fault for really believing I’d found Exley so easily. I should have known better. Like I should have known finding Exley wasn’t going to be easy and would take more time than I wanted it to. That made me sad, of course. But I was also still pretty excited, because my dad was home, and even if he was sick, I had a plan to help him get better. Just because S. wasn’t Exley didn’t mean that Exley wasn’t out there, waiting for me to find him. Just because the plan hadn’t worked yet didn’t mean it wouldn’t work ever. In other words, I was part let down and part jazzed up. And when you’re a boy and you’re part let down and part jazzed up, you do one of two things: you go see your mother, or you go see a woman who is definitely not your mother. I decided to go see a woman who was definitely not my mother.
HER NAME WAS K. She was a student in my dad’s class, which I was teaching for my dad until he got back from Iraq. Every Tuesday night I took attendance, gave the students an A for attending or an F for not, and then let them go. K.’s was one of the names I’d called. Apparently, she liked the way I called it. She lived going out of town toward JCCC. About three miles from where I’d left Exley. It was getting cold; by the time I biked there, my nose was running, and I wiped it with my sleeve, just like Mother always told me not to. Funny. I never could stop thinking about Mother whenever I was with K., maybe because they were about the same age.