After a few seconds I looked at the book again. It was written by someone named Jonathan Yardley. I sat there and read it cover to cover. This is some of what I learned: Exley had written two other books after A Fan’s Notes, books I’d never heard of and books that this Yardley guy (and everyone else, apparently) didn’t think too much of; he had two sisters, and a brother who was dead, and he also had two ex-wives and two daughters, not sons; his mother had died not too long ago and had been buried next to Exley’s father. As far as I knew, all of that could have been true. Yardley also claimed that Exley was a drunk and a moocher, which was probably also true. But there was at least one thing in the book that wasn’t true: that Exley was dead. When Yardley wrote on page xx of the prologue that “Fred died at age sixty-three,” I assumed it was a typo and, after the initial shock, didn’t pay it much attention until I reached page 249, the second-to-last page, on which Yardley wrote, “At nine thirty in the morning, June 17, 1992, Fred died.”
I closed the book, then went to my dad’s study and opened the window seat. According to this Yardley, the two other books Exley had written were called Pages from a Cold Island and Last Notes from Home. My dad probably had a dozen copies of A Fan’s Notes stashed in his window seat. I pulled them out, one by one, and looked for the titles of these other two books. I couldn’t find them in the first seven copies. But then, when I opened the eighth, I found them listed on the very first page:
Also By Frederick Exley
Pages from a Cold Island
Last Notes from Home
So Yardley had gotten that right. I wondered why my dad had never mentioned these two books. Maybe he didn’t know they existed, either. Or maybe he knew and had read them and didn’t like them any more than Yardley did. I also wondered why they weren’t mentioned in the first seven copies of A Fan’s Notes that I’d looked at. I went back and looked at them. As far as I could tell, the books were all the same edition. It didn’t make sense that they would have different pages. I went back to the copy that had that page and then pulled on the page, just a little, and it came right out of the book. I knew then what had happened: I knew then that my dad had torn that page out of the other books. He’d probably just forgotten to tear the page out of this one. It made me feel a little sick to think that Exley had written books my dad hated so much he couldn’t stand to look at the page their titles were written on. I was glad I hadn’t heard of Exley’s other two books before now; I was glad I hadn’t read them and hated them, too.
Anyway, then I went to the phone book and looked up F.B., one of Exley’s sisters. Yardley had claimed she lived out on Washington Island, on the Saint Lawrence River. I didn’t find F.B.’s name in the phone book. But I did find an I.B. who lived on Washington Island. I., according to Yardley, was the name of F.’s husband. So Yardley got that right, too. My stomach started flipping and flipping, and I thought I was going to throw up. I wondered where the special pot was. Mother always put a special pot next to my bed when I was sick, in case I needed to throw up in it. I didn’t know where she kept it. But it probably wasn’t near the rest of the pots she cooked food in. While I was thinking about this, I actually did throw up, right on the white pages. When I was done, I chucked the whole soggy, gross mess in the garbage. Then I went to see Exley.
EXLEY WAS DRUNK. I mean really drunk. A chair and a couch had been overturned and pushed, or kicked, to the edges of the room, and there was broken glass everywhere. The only thing still standing was a desk. There was one empty vodka jug and one nearly empty one on the floor; Exley was lying on the floor next to the bottles and singing. Exley had said in his book that he was a good yodeler. If that was true at one time, it wasn’t true anymore. I couldn’t tell what song he was supposed to be singing. But I could tell it wasn’t the Erie Canal song. I’d learned that song in second-grade music. I knew so many books from beginning to end. But the Erie Canal song was probably the only song I knew, beginning to end. That probably would have made me really sad if I’d had time to think about it.
“We have a problem,” I said, and then told him what it was. Exley stopped singing and seemed to listen. He was nodding, at least. When I was done, I expected him to say something about how this Yardley was obviously a crackpot and not to worry about it. But he didn’t say that or anything else. He reached over and grabbed the bottle and drank what was left of the vodka. When he was done drinking it, Exley opened his mouth and made a weird, dry sound, like he was trying to breathe fire.
“Do you even know this guy?” I asked. I’d brought Yardley’s book with me. I opened it and flipped through it until I found the right page. “He says you two ‘were friendly in a way.’”
“Fucking way,” Exley slurred.
“That’s what he wrote,” I said. I flipped forward a few pages. “He also said you liked to call him late at night when you were drunk: one night my phone rang and a slurred voice greeted me.’” Then I handed Exley Yardley’s book. Exley held it for a second before letting it slide off his chest and to the floor, next to the first bottle of vodka.
“Fucking way,” Exley slurred again, and then I had an idea. There was a phone lying on the floor next to the turned-over couch. I picked it up and dialed 411. The book said Yardley lived in ______, and in County, ______. I asked for listings for Yardley in both places and the operator gave them to me. No one was at the ______ number, but when I dialed ______ County, a voice answered. It was a man’s voice.
“Is this Jonathan Yardley?”
“Yes.”
“Hold on a second,” I said. “I have someone who wants to talk to you.”
I handed the phone to Exley. He said, “The fuck is this?” and without bothering to wait for an answer, he started talking: about the Counselor and how she’d broken his heart and about the fuckin’ war and the fuckin’ army and fuckin’ Watertown. Then Exley started crying; he asked me where the rest of the goddamn vodka was, but he also said this to the phone, to Yardley. I’m guessing Yardley didn’t know where the rest of the goddamn vodka was, and neither did I, so I didn’t say anything. So then Exley said into the phone and through his tears that I was a little goofy fuck who wouldn’t give him any more vodka and then he stopped crying and said, very seriously and soberly, “I don’t question that my friend is right and I wrong, that he is happy and I am not, that his is the hard and mine the easy way.” He reached over and grabbed the empty jug of vodka, put the mouth to his mouth, and tipped it up. Nothing came out. He threw it across the room and said, into the phone, “‘I’ve got to have more than that.’” Yardley must have said something, because Exley listened into the phone for a second. Then his face got angry again, and he asked, “The fuck is this?” And then he dropped the phone right onto the floor and got up and went into the bathroom.