I switched off my lamp, flung my reading pillow onto the floor, then tucked A Fan’s Notes under my sleeping pillow, the way you’d do with one of your teeth, except mine hadn’t even started falling out yet: I was nine years old and still had all the originals.
Part Two
Things I Learned from My Dad, Who Learned Them from Exley (Lesson 2: The Protestant Work Ethic)
I was in the car with my dad and Mother. My dad was driving; Mother was in the passenger seat; I was in the back. It was winter, and it had been winter for a while. The snowbanks on either side of the road were higher than our car, and the snow on the road came up to the middle of our tires, and it was still snowing. We passed a guy shoveling his driveway and my dad said, “Shovel, you fucking dummy.” He said this under his breath, not loud enough for the shoveler to hear it. My dad said things like this all the time. If we passed a guy mowing his lawn, my dad would say, “Mow, you fucking dummy.” If we passed a kayaker on the Black River, my dad would say, “Paddle, you fucking dummy.” I never understood this, and so one day, when Mother wasn’t in the car and we passed a guy working on the outside of his house and my dad said, “Paint, you fucking dummy,” I asked my dad why he was telling the dummy to paint when he was already painting. This was after I knew about A Fan’s Notes but before I’d read it myself. Anyway, my dad explained to me that in A Fan’s Notes, Exley had told guys who were shoveling in Watertown in another winter, “Shovel, you fucking dummies,” and my dad also explained what Exley really meant when he said that and what my dad really meant when he said stuff like that, too. “Get it?” my dad had asked. “Kind of,” I’d said, but he could tell I didn’t, and I could tell this disappointed him. That was a terrible feeling, much worse than not understanding why Exley and my dad had said what they’d said to all the dummies. And so I said to my dad __________ weeks later in the car:
“Dad, did you tell the dummy to shovel because you were critiquing the dummy’s Protestant work ethic?”
My dad looked at me in the rearview, his eyes brightening. Mother looked at my dad; her eyes were bright, too, but in a different way. She opened her mouth to say something but then didn’t. She turned away from my dad and toward her window, just in time for my dad to look in her direction.
“What?” my dad said.
“Nothing,” Mother said. “I was just looking out the window and enjoying the scenery.”
My dad didn’t seem to believe it, maybe because the scenery was Watertown, which we all knew Mother didn’t enjoy. My dad waited for a few more seconds for Mother to say something else, or to think of something else to say to her. Finally he looked back at me in the rearview and said, “What do you think?”
“I think it was a critique of the dummy’s Protestant work ethic,” I said. “I think the dummy had too much of it.”
“I think you’re right,” my dad said. He smiled at me in the mirror and then looked at Mother, who by now had smushed her face right up against the window and was not smiling.
Use Your Mine-Duh
I woke to find Mother standing over me. She had on her Monday work clothes. She wore a different outfit for every day of the week. On Fridays she wore her dark blue pin-striped pantsuit, just to show people that the week wasn’t over and she meant business. On Mondays she wore a black pin-striped pantsuit, just to show people that the weekend was over and she meant business. “Hi, Mom,” I said.
“Hey, sweetie,” she said. We were always nicer to each other first thing in the morning. I don’t think any of the books I’ve read, including Exley’s, ever said why people were nicer to each other in the morning. Maybe people weren’t. Maybe Mother and I were the only ones. She bent down to kiss me, put her right hand on the left side of my pillow for support. I was afraid she was going to feel A Fan’s Notes underneath the pillow, but she didn’t. “Time to get up for school,” Mother said, and kissed me on the forehead.
“OK,” I said. I shifted my head a little and could feel the book move toward Mother’s hand. I knew that I should be getting up, that Mother wanted me to, but I was afraid if I moved my head any more, the book might reveal itself. So I kept my head on the pillow.
“I have to leave for work,” she said. “Please eat some breakfast before you go to school, OK?”
“OK.”
Mother took her hand off the pillow, stood up straight, then looked at her watch and frowned. “Miller, you really need to get up.”
“OK,” I said. I could feel our early morning nice feelings burning off, like dew. Mother could feel it, too.
“I’m sorry to be such a nag,” Mother said. “I love you.”
I loved her, too. But I didn’t feel like I could say so just then. “OK,” I told her instead, again. Mother nodded, like she’d just lost a trial she knew she was going to lose. Then she was gone, out the door, and our nice feelings were gone, too, until the next morning, when we’d start all over again.
I DIDN’T WANT to go to school. I wanted to see my dad; I wanted to keep trying to find Exley. But I knew if I didn’t go to school, then school would tell Mother, and Mother would know something was up. If Mother knew something was up, she’d get me to tell her what it was. She’d ruin everything.
So I got dressed, put A Fan’s Notes in my backpack, ate two bags of mini blueberry muffins and drank a juice box, then walked to school. My first class on Monday was with Mrs. T. In her classroom, above the blackboard, Mrs. T. had tacked up a poster. The poster was broken up into four panels. Each of the panels had a brain. The brains were bright red, like lobsters, and each of the brains had a pair of hands with white gloves on them. In the first panel, the brain was wearing safety goggles and pouring the contents of one test tube into another. In the second panel, the brain was reading the dictionary. In the third panel, the brain was holding a sign with the word CANCER crossed out. In the fourth panel, the brain was wearing a hard hat; its hands were holding either end of a blueprint, a half-built skyscraper rising behind it. At the top of the poster were the words USE YOUR MIND. This happened to be Mrs. T.’s favorite expression, too, except she pronounced it “mine-duh” not “mind.” As in “Miller, use your mine-duh.” Anyway, she taught advanced reading, although it was two months into the school year and we mostly hadn’t read anything yet.