“I know that’s who you are,” she says, frowning. “You just look different.”
“It’s the beard,” I say.
“That’s part of it,” she says, still frowning. “I thought I asked you not to come to the lecture tonight.”
“I know,” I say. “But I couldn’t help myself.” I pause, thinking of what I should say next. “You were very impressive,” I say, but she ignores the compliment.
“Why did you bring M.?” she wants to know. “Is this part of his treatment?”
Yes, I almost say, but then I think, No. No more lies. “No,” I say. “He came because I wanted to go. If I hadn’t gone, he wouldn’t have, either.”
M.’s mother nods at this and then asks, “Who did you think I was talking about?”
“When?”
“Earlier. When I said, ‘Wow, so that was you in there,’ and you said, ‘No. It’s just me. M.’s doctor.’ Who’d you think I was talking about?”
“Frederick Exley,” I say.
M.’s mother’s frown deepens and turns into something else, something more permanent seeming. “Why would I think you were him?”
“Because M. does,” I say.
“Why does M. think that?”
“Because he wants to,” I say. “Because I let him. Because he thinks his dad is in the VA hospital and the only way to save him is if he finds Exley and brings him to his dad.”
We both stand there and watch as a snowplow makes a scraping, shooshing lap around the Square and then heads south on Washington. After that, the Square is quiet. There is nothing as quiet as nighttime Watertown after a plow has passed through and it’s still snowing. There’s nothing as quiet as that moment before one person is about to tell another something neither of them wants to hear.
“I saw you here this morning,” I say.
“Where?”
“Right here,” I say. “On the Square.”
“What do you mean?” she says.
For Christ’s sake, C., cut the shit, will ya? is what I want to say. But these are Exley’s words, or close to them, and I know those are exactly the wrong words to use with M.’s mother. So instead, I don’t say anything. I simply reach into my pocket, take out the manila envelope, take the newspaper clipping out of the envelope, and hand it to her. She reads it for a long, long time — far longer than the quantity of text warrants.
“Oh, C.,” I say. Because for the first time, she is no longer M.’s mother to me. She is herself. Apparently, you become yourself to someone when that someone finally learns your secrets. “Tell me what you’ve been up to.”
“I can’t,” she says, still looking at the clipping. This is a familiar moment for a mental health professional. To be a mental health professional, you have to know when patients are incapable of speaking for themselves, and when that happens, you have to know how to speak for them. There is enough residual mental health professional in me to know that this is one of those times.
“He was K., wasn’t he,” I say. “M. thinks his dad was having an affair with a woman named K. because that’s something Exley might have done. But M.’s dad wasn’t. You were having an affair with a man named K.”
C. nods, still looking at the clipping.
“And he was a soldier,” I say. “And he died in Iraq. You found out on Sunday. That’s why M. found you crying in the bathroom.”
“K. was in the reserves,” C. says. “He was the other lawyer in my office before they called him up.”
I can hear something in her voice, something that tells me she still loves him. The way I want her to love me. The way I love her. The way M.’s dad and K. probably loved her, too, even though they were cruel to her. The way I’m about to be cruel to her as well. And why? Why does love let us be so cruel to the beloved?
“And he was married,” I say.
“Stop it,” C. says.
“And he told you he would leave his wife for you.”
“Please stop it,” C. says.
“But he didn’t.”
“Fine,” she says, finally looking up at me. And I know immediately that I’ve gone too far. And I also know that this is why love allows us to be so cruel to the beloved: so that the beloved doesn’t make the mistake of loving us again or loving us for the first time. “You want me to fucking say it?”
“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. ”