Dear Miller,
I’m not going to lie to you, bud: I’m so ______. I’m so, so ______. I can’t even think of anything else to say in this letter. All of the other guys here in ______ are writing letters home saying that everything is fine, don’t worry, everything is fine, I’ll be home soon. I wrote a couple of those letters, too. You got them, right? I hope you got them. I don’t even know if you got them. You probably didn’t even get them. You probably think I’m a horrible dad for not writing you. Or you got the letters but haven’t written me back because you think I’m a horrible dad. Because either way, I haven’t heard from you in a long, long time. That’s another thing I’m so ______ about.
It’s like something is in my mind and I can’t get it out of there, not even for a little while. Even reading A Fan’s Notes doesn’t help me, bud. I tried to give my copy to ______, but he just laughed and said, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” So I just threw it away. I can’t even get my mind clear enough to feel sad about that, or happy, or anything.
I know I shouldn’t be saying this, bud. But I don’t know what else to say: I’m so ______. I’m so ______ that I’m going to ______. I don’t want to be here anymore. I keep walking around telling people — ______, ______, even ______ — that I don’t want to be here anymore, and they laugh at me. They say, “No ______.” But they don’t understand. I want to come home. I want to come home, Miller. Even if your mom doesn’t want me home. Even if you don’t want me home, either. Even if there isn’t anything there for me to come home to. I don’t think I can take it here anymore. I want to come home.
Love, Your dad
Doctor’s Notes (Entry 19, Part 1)
I reread the three letters several times in an attempt to determine their authenticity. On the one hand, they look the same as the first letter M. showed me ______ weeks ago: they are on the same plain white paper, in the same style, written by the same hand with the same penmanship. If that letter was a fake — and I was certain it was — then these letters must be fraudulent as well. But if these letters are fakes, then why do they refer to letters M. has and has not written to his father — letters that, if these three letters are fake, cannot and do not exist? If M. has written the letters, then why do they tell M. not to think about K. and not to teach M.’s father’s class, when clearly M. has no intention of following these orders? If M. has written the letters, then why do they make so many obviously “nudge-nudge, wink-wink” exclamatory allusions to M.’s reading a book M. insists he has not read? Are these letters real, then? Or are they the most expertly conceived frauds? Or are they the most amateurishly conceived frauds? I struggle with this for a while until I remember I’m dealing with M., who has already shown he’s inclined toward the fraudulent. And besides, as I know as well as the next mental health professional, children are capable of seeming expert one moment and amateurish the next. With that in mind, it seems clear enough that the letters are fake. But whether they are or they aren’t, why were they in M.’s mother’s possession, and not M.’s?
Just then the phone rings. I know it is M.’s mother. How serendipitous, I think, I shall ask her myself why the letters were on her dresser and not M.’s. But then I realize I cannot! I cannot ask her about the letters without revealing to her that I have read the letters. Because I cannot reveal to her that I have read the letters without also revealing to her that I broke into her house and rifled through her dresser drawers and stole the letters, inadvertently, and the newspaper clipping, advertently. Because I cannot reveal all those things and still have her speak to me the way I want her to speak to me. Because I’d rather hear her lovely whisper than hear the truth behind the letters that were in her drawer and that are now in my hands. And I wonder: Is this true love? When people talk about true love, do they mean a love that enables you to endure the truth, or a love that makes you ignore it?
“Hello,” M.’s mother whispers, and with that whisper the letters disappear from my brain, if not from my possession.
“I was just thinking about you,” I say.
“Really?” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “Really.” Fortunately for me, we are on the phone, and she can’t see my smile, can’t see how pleased with myself I am. I’ve never been at all proficient at “playful banter” until now.
I hear M.’s mother sip on something, hear the clink of ice cubes against glass. Normally, I am against the consumption of alcohol — against and, indeed, opposed to it—but I am prepared to have an open mind where drinking and M.’s mother are concerned. I am prepared to love it if she loves it, or if it makes her love me. I hear her sip again, then sigh. “Everything OK?” I ask.
“M. and I went out for M.’s birthday dinner,” she says.
“Where?”
“The Crystal,” she says.
I think immediately of seeing M. outside the Crystal this morning, seeing him kick the man on the sidewalk, etc. And then I think of all the things — true and untrue — that I’ve learned about M. by reading his journal. And then I think of his fraudulent letters, and I think I should tell his mother about them, all of them. But I cannot, because in telling her about the former, I will have to admit I did nothing to stop him. And about the latter, I will have to admit that I broke into their house. Suddenly I feel tired, bloated, and disgusted with deceit, and when I say, “Oh,” M.’s mother must hear something of that in my voice, because she says, “I know. But it’s M.’s favorite place. We always go there for his birthday.” Her voice suddenly sounds distracted and far away.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” I ask. She does: she tells me about how she and M. were having a good time until he “freaked out,” and then she describes the freak-out. “I’m so glad you’ll be seeing him tomorrow,” she says. “I really do think you’re helping him.”
“I think I’m helping him, too,” I say. But then I picture M. standing in the college classroom by himself, and I wonder if I really am helping him. I wonder if a better mental health professional would have ignored the security guard and walked into the classroom and demanded M. admit that whoever K. was, she wasn’t his student, because he wasn’t teaching a class. I wonder if a better mental health professional would be sneaking around his patient’s house and wooing his patient’s mother. I wonder if a better mental health professional would be telling his patient’s mother about what he’d found out about her son. I wonder if a better mental health professional would be talking to his patient’s mother at all. But the thought of not speaking to M.’s mother at all is too much: my brain — my brain and, indeed, my mind—can’t handle the thought, and I blurt out, “Did your husband really teach at Jefferson County Community College?”
“Why?”
“M. says he did,” I say. “It might be easier to know what M. is making up if I know what he isn’t.”
M.’s mother sighs again. “M. might really think his dad was an English professor,” she says. “For that matter, his dad might have thought he was an English professor, too, after telling me for so long that he was one.”
“But he wasn’t,” I say.
“No,” M.’s mother says. “Instead of teaching a class every Tuesday, he was. ” And here she pauses for a moment. Clearly M.’s mother won’t, or can’t, finish her thought. Fortunately, one of the main tasks of the mental health professional is to finish his patients’ thoughts for them, even when, as is the case with M.’s mother, they are not my patients.