Brock Clarke - Exley

“Do you think I should tell Mother?”

“About?”

“About my dad being in the hospital and about finding Exley,” I said. “You’d better not,” he said.

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

“Because she won’t believe me,” I said. Because Mother wouldn’t have believed me. She would have thought I’d made the whole thing up. Making things up was a problem of mine, according to Mother. This was why I was seeing Dr. Pahnee in the first place. I never bothered asking Dr. Pahnee whether he believed me, though, because I knew he did. Because that’s also why he was there. Mother thought she was paying him to help me stop making up the things she thought I was making up. But I knew Dr. Pahnee was there to listen to me talk and then to believe everything I said. “Because she’ll think I made the whole thing up.”

Dr. Pahnee nodded, unclasped his hands, reclasped them around the back of his neck in a satisfied way. “Better not tell her,” he said. This was the only advice Dr. Pahnee ever gave me. Before Dr. Pahnee, Mother had sent me to another doctor. The only advice he ever gave me was “Crying doesn’t do anyone any good” and “Stay positive.” It was too hard to listen to that first doctor’s advice, and much easier to pay attention to Dr. Pahnee when he advised me, “Better not tell her.” I got up from my couch, and Dr. Pahnee got up from his chair. “Thanks,” I said. “You were a big help,” I said, which was the truth.

“ ‘I’ve got human life — do you understand that? Human life! — in my hands!’ ” This was what Dr. Pahnee always said after I thanked him. It think it was his way of saying, That’s what I do. I help people. But anyway, you’re welcome .

“OK,” I said. “See you on Wednesday.” And then I turned and headed for the stairs.

“Miller,” Dr. Pahnee said. I turned and looked at him. Whatever was in his face that made me think he was happy, or amused, was gone. He looked serious. There were worried grooves in his forehead. “Maybe you should write all this down.”

This was something new. I always told Dr. Pahnee something and asked him a question based on what I’d told him and then he answered it. The first doctor had asked me to write down things I’d learned from my dad. But Dr. Pahnee had never told me to write anything down. He was sitting on his desk now, his feet stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. In his office, he always wore clunky brown shoes: they looked like work boots, except lower. But I noticed now that he was barefoot. I couldn’t help staring at his bare feet: they were normal human feet — there wasn’t anything especially callused or yellowed or cracked or gross about them — but that they were bare seemed wrong, off , just like my dad being groomed in the hospital.

“Write what down?”

“Everything that’s going on with you and your mother and dad and everything else,” he said.

“Why?”

“There’s a lot going on in your life,” he said. “It might help you to keep things straight if you wrote things down.”

“The first doctor told me to write down things I learned from my dad,” I said. “Do you want me to do that, too?”

“If you’d like.”

“Will you read it?”

“Only if you want me to.”

“Beginning when?”

Dr. Pahnee shrugged and said, “Why not begin with what happened today?”

“OK, I guess,” I said. Then I said, again, “Thanks, you were a big help.” I waited for a while, expected him to say, again, what he always said after I thanked him for being a big help. But he didn’t say anything. He just kept looking at me in that serious, worried way. It kind of creeped me out. So I turned and made for the stairs again. This time, Dr. Pahnee didn’t say anything to stop me.

Doctor’s Notes (Entry 12)

Asurprise visit from M. Normally, I would object to a patient’s stopping by on a Sunday, unannounced — unannounced and, indeed, without warning . Normally, I would explain to the patient that I was in the middle of something and send him/her away. But I’ve grown quite fond of M. He’s become my favorite patient, and not only because of his mother. Possibly because he’s told me how to help him, rather than making me figure it out for myself, as is the wont of all my other patients. Possibly because it is a relief to be told what to say and when; possibly because it’s sometimes nice — nice and, indeed, pleasurable —to not have to sound like oneself all the time. Possibly because the whole charade seems harmless enough: I do not think M. really believes me to be a different doctor; I don’t think he really believes that Dr. Pahnee and myself are different people. We are role-playing, that much is clear, although the origin of the name — Dr. Pahnee — remains unclear. But in any case, I am recording my sessions with M., in which I speak as Miller has told me Dr. Pahnee must speak, and during my presentation to the NCMHP, I will juxtapose those tapes with these notes, in which I write as myself. I’m certain the results will be quite revelatory. Regardless, when I find M. standing on my porch, I ask, “Would you like to come in?” as he has instructed me to ask, and he says yes.

As I’ve documented in entries 5–11, M. and I have fallen into something of a “groove,” professionally speaking: M. tells me what’s bothering him and I listen, nonjudgmentally, until he asks me if I should tell his mother any of what he has told me. I always say, “Better not tell her,” as M. has instructed me to say. In this way, I have begun to heal him. It has been a most remarkable process: by my agreeing to just sit in my chair and listen , M. will talk — about school, about his father and mother. True, I am no closer to determining whether M.’s father really is in Iraq, or whether M. truly believes his father is there, or whether he truly believes that any of what he says is true. I am no closer to determining why, if M. is lying, he’d rather believe his father is in mortal danger in Iraq than believe he is not in mortal danger somewhere else. But at least M. has stopped crying. At least he seems to like me. That is progress enough.

Or so I thought until this evening, when M. tells me of a series of most disturbing developments: that he woke up to find his mother crying in the bathroom; that he took this to mean that his father had come home and was in the Veterans Affairs hospital; that he went to the Veterans Affairs hospital and found his father, who, according to the attending nurse, had been there for two weeks already and who’d been in a coma before waking up, briefly, today; that he went to a hotel — a hotel and, indeed, a motel — and believed he’d found the Watertownian — I believe his name is Exley —who’d authored M.’s father’s (and M.’s, too?) aforementioned favorite book; that said Watertownian was “in bad shape” (which I took to mean drunk — drunk and, indeed, inebriated); that M. escorted this individual halfway down the Washington Street hill until a man of Asian descent stopped him, revealed to M. the man’s true identity (it was not this Exley), and took the man back to the motel; that M. was saddened by this development but not deterred; that M. remains determined to find this Exley; that M. then went to visit a woman named K., a woman M. has visited before. This visit, as with others, seems to have involved only the consumption of baked goods and should seem innocent enough. Still, there is something sinister about it, especially since K. seems to know M.’s father but not his dear mother; in addition, today’s visit concluded with K. throwing M. out of her apartment, an ejection M. found most upsetting. At the end of this tale, M. asks me if he should mention any of this to his mother, and I am so stunned I can only say what he’s instructed me to say: “Better not tell her.” Although I do request, before M. leaves, that he put all of this down in writing, in the hopes that M. will then let me read what he’s written and that what is vague and disturbing in the oral tale will be clearer and innocent on the page.