“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.”
The Truth
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.”