Brock Clarke - Exley

“No, no,” I say. “Not at all necessary.”

“K. told me he was going to leave his wife,” C. says. “Because I wasn’t totally stupid. I told him I’d leave T., that I was willing to do that, that I didn’t love T. the way I loved K. But he’d have to leave his wife at the same time. We’d have to do it together. Because I didn’t want to mess up M.’s life unless it was for a very good reason.” She pauses and then says, “I guess that makes me sound like a shitty mother.”

“No,” I say. “It just makes you sound practical.”

C. stares at me for a while. I can tell she’s trying to determine whether I’m saying this sarcastically, whether it’s an insult. But it’s not an insult. I don’t think she’s a bad mother for cheating on her husband, and I don’t think she’s a bad mother for being willing to disrupt M.’s life in the name of love, and I don’t think she’s a bad mother, or person, for agreeing to go on a date with me just days after learning her former lover has been killed. I think C. was just being practical. I think C. knew that M. would never love her as much as he loved his dad, and she also knew how lonely that would feel, and so she would need someone else to love, and to love her, in addition to loving M. I think C. just didn’t want to feel alone, which is about the most practical thing any of us could ever want.

“Anyway,” she says, “K. said he would. He’d been telling me that for months. And then he got called up and he said he couldn’t do it. He said he couldn’t go to Iraq and leave his wife and son at the same time.” C. pauses. “When he said that, I said, ‘K., I love you.’ I thought that would make a difference. Like an idiot .”

“You’re not an idiot,” I say.

“And you know what he said?” C. asks. I don’t answer, because she’s not actually talking to me anymore. “He said, ‘I don’t know what to say.’”

“How did he say this?” I ask.

C. looks at me the way her son looked at me — weeks earlier when I asked a similar question about M.’s father. “With his mouth,” she says.

“No, no,” I say. “What was the method of delivery? Did he call you on the telephone? Did he tell you at work?”

“He told me at home,” she says. “I’d taken off early from work. He knew that, and he also knew T. was supposed to be out grocery shopping for our Christmas dinner. T. told me that’s what he’d be doing: shopping. He said he wouldn’t be home until five. But instead he pulled into the driveway two hours before then, right as K. was pulling out.”

“He knew K.?”

“T. had met him a couple of times. Enough to recognize him. And I talked about K. a lot without realizing I was talking about him a lot.” C. stopped for a moment, like she was conjuring up some distant memory and trying to decide whether it was a fond memory or a bitter one. “Once, before K. and I even started seeing each other, I was telling T. about how K. had reassured one of our clients that it was all right to press charges against her husband, and how most men didn’t know how to speak to women who didn’t know how not to be afraid of them, but K. did, and T. said, ‘You sure talk about this K. a lot. Should I be worried about him, for Christ’s sake?’ And I said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, no.’ But I thought, Oh God, you should be worried. We all should .”

I let C. think about this for a moment before saying, “You were standing in the driveway. ”

“Yes, I was standing in the driveway, crying. Like an idiot . M.’s father got out of his car. He watched K.’s car until it drove out of sight. Then he looked back at me. His eyes were red and squinty. He smelled like he’d been drinking at the Crystal, not like he’d been shopping at the Big M. ‘Why aren’t you grocery shopping?’ I asked him.

“‘The store was closed,’ he said.

“‘The grocery store was closed?’ I said. ‘At three in the afternoon?’

“‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I never made it to the store. I was out drinking at the Crystal. Now why don’t you tell me why K. was here and why you’re crying?’”

“And then you told him the truth?” I ask, and she nods. “Why did you do that?”

“Because I just wanted it to be over,” she says. “Our marriage had been over for so long anyway. I didn’t want to pretend that it wasn’t anymore.”

“And this happened on Friday, the twentieth of March, 200–?” When I say that, C. starts to cry finally, so loudly that the falling snow and the empty, snow-covered Square can’t muffle it. “You sound like M.,” she says.

“Who sounds like M.’s dad,” I say. Which reminds me of the last thing I need to know. “Why did M.’s dad let him think K. was his student?”

“Because,” C. says, “he didn’t want M. to think his mother was a whore.”

“Don’t say that,” I say.

“M.’s father turned me into a shrew,” C. says. “And K. turned me into a whore.”

“Don’t say shit like that,” I say.

“The question is, what are you going to turn me into?”

I’m going to turn you into my very own , I think. I’m going to take you to the NCMHP meeting tomorrow and we’re going to forget all this. We’re going to act like this never happened and doesn’t matter . But that’s impossible — impossible, not because I don’t want anything to do with C. now that I know her secret, but because she only wanted something to do with me because I was a man who didn’t know she had a secret. I know that now, just as I know it’s impossible to turn C. back into K.’s lover or T.’s wife or anything else. Except, possibly, M.’s mother.

“I think M. is actually telling the truth this time,” I say. “I think his dad really is in the VA hospital.”

M.’s mother nods like she’s hearing some expected piece of news. “So you’re going to turn me into a fool,” she says. “Just like M.”

“No, no,” I say. “M. says he suffered a head injury in Iraq. A really bad one.”

“You know, you’ve been a big help with M.,” M.’s mother says. “You’ve been a huge help. Massive. But I think I’ll take it from here.”

“I think these letters really are from M.’s dad,” I say, waving the manila envelope at her. “I know you think M. wrote them and paid someone to send them to you from an army post office. But I don’t think he did. I think his dad did. I think his dad really did send these from Iraq.”

“How did you get your hands on that anyway?” she asks. She sticks out a gloved hand and I put the envelope in it.

“I stole it off your dresser,” I admit. “The night you took M. out to the Crystal. The same night I read M.’s journal.” I see the look on her face, and I clarify. “No, no. His real journal. It’s in the window seat. It’s different from the diary you read. It tells the truth, somewhat.”

“You broke into my house ?”

I consider defending myself by saying that I didn’t actually break in, that the door was unlocked. But I don’t say that. Instead I say, “Please don’t tear up those letters. M. hasn’t read them yet. He still thinks his dad stopped writing him four months ago and he can’t figure out why. It’s killing him. Please don’t tear up those letters.”

M.’s mother stares at me for a moment, like I must be kidding; I stare back in a way that must suggest I’m not. But she doesn’t tear up the letters, at least. She puts the manila envelope in her coat pocket, turns, and begins walking to the only car parked on our side of the Square.

“If you’d just go down to the VA hospital,” I say. “M. says they called you two weeks ago.”

“M. says ,” she says as she unlocks and opens her car door. “You and I both know whoever called me was someone M. convinced to call me and pretend to be from the VA hospital. You know it wasn’t really the hospital calling, and you know M.’s father isn’t a patient there, just like you know M.’s father didn’t really write those letters from Iraq. You know it’s just like M. to mess with me like this. You know all that.”