Read I Am the Cheese Page 12

END TAPE OZK013

  I am a spy. I am across the street from the Varney house on Upper Main Street in Hookset, Vermont, and it is dark now and cold and my cap is pulled down over my ears and my hands are stiff with chill as I clutch my father’s package. My body is pressed against a stone wall that divides a Salvation Army building from an abandoned supermarket. Upper Main Street is quiet and the rush hour is over. Occasionally, people pass by the sidewalk, and I can almost reach out and touch their elbows, but they don’t see me. I look across the street and I can see the bike. Or, at least, I can see the handlebars where they stick up above the banister of the front porch. The bike is so near and yet so far. It would be so easy to run up the front walk and grab the bike and then pedal away. But there are always people coming and going at the house. The Varney family is a big family with people of all ages going in and out of the house, as if it’s some kind of boardinghouse. So I wait for the evening to quiet down, for the comings and goings to halt.

  At least my headache is gone. I stopped at a drugstore and bought a small tin of aspirin and then asked the clerk at the soda fountain to pour me a glass of water. I gulped three aspirins and then threw the rest of them in a trash container. I didn’t want to be found with pills on me; how could anyone be sure they were aspirins?—so many pills look alike. I think again of the capsules that I didn’t take this morning but now I’m glad I didn’t take them. I have survived the terrible moments of being without them and my head is clear and my senses alert and I need all the sharpness I can muster to get the bike back. I have to move fast, no wasted motion, and I can’t afford to stumble or hesitate.

  I could have gone to the police, of course. But I didn’t want to take any risks. I am so near Rutterburg now. Belton Falls and the motel are only a mile or two away and I can easily make it to Rutterburg in the morning and I don’t want to take a chance of the police asking questions and wondering what someone from Massachusetts is doing in the dark of night up in Vermont. All I want is to get my bike back and then find the motel and sleep, rest my weary bones and aching legs and then pedal into Rutterburg, Vermont, tomorrow morning in the sunshine.

  The front door of the Varney house slams and I am alert again, holding my breath, tensing my body. A boy of about my own age comes out of the house and stands there for a moment, looking around, looking up and down the street, as if he senses he is being watched. I shrink and shrivel against the stone wall. He walks to the bike and runs his hands over the handlebar as if he is caressing it. While he’s inspecting the bike, a woman comes out of the house and approaches him. They talk awhile and I can’t hear them. The woman places her hand on the boy’s shoulder and he wrenches away from her.

  Suddenly, I miss my mother. I want to cry. I want to feel her hand on my shoulder. I watch the woman standing near the boy. She’s still talking and he doesn’t look at her, his back to her. I hate him. Not only for stealing my bike but for turning his back on his mother. He has a mother and he turns his back on her. I feel like dashing across the street to attack him, knock him down, feel the fracture of bone as my fist hits his jaw. But I stay there, breathing hard, waiting my chance, not wanting to think of my mother, holding off the anguish, the loneliness. Then the woman goes into the house and the boy stands there for a moment more. Then he takes the bike and wheels it to the steps, guides it down the three steps from the porch to the front walk, and begins to wheel it across the lawn. He turns the corner and is heading toward the back of the house.

  That’s when I make my move. I can’t afford to let him out of my sight or allow him to disappear into the backyard because the yard is an unknown quantity and I don’t know the conditions there. So, I yell, “Hey, Junior Varney,” mustering all my vocal strength, and at the same time I run across the street, a passing car brushing me slightly as I burst into the roadway.

  Junior Varney stops, dumbfounded. He draws the bike close to him as if it’s a shield. My heart pounds furiously as I approach him. In dismay, I see that he is taller and heavier than I am. I sigh, sadly. It’s never easy, never easy.

  “That’s my bike,” I say.

  “What are you talking about?” he answers, belligerently. He is prepared to fight and I feel like crying again.

  “The bike. It’s mine. You stole it on Main Street.”

  “You’re crazy,” he says. “I bought this bike from a kid this afternoon. I paid him fifty bucks for it.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “You’re the liar. You’re the goddam liar. You better get out of here or you’ll get massacred.”

  I am terrified but I reach out and grab the handlebars. I drop my father’s package and wrench at the bike. This is my bike and I am riding it into Rutterburg, Vermont, tomorrow morning and nothing is going to stop me. Nothing. I pull at the bike and Junior Varney and I are caught in a ridiculous tug-of-war and the air is filled with our breathing, no other sound, as if we are alone on the planet. Finally, he pushes against me and I lose my balance and fall. I hit the ground and roll over. He tries to run, holding on to the handlebars. I dive at him. I grab his feet. He trips, pitches forward, and lets go of the bike as he falls. He hits the pavement, his crunch sickening as he strikes the concrete. In that brief interval between the time he feels the impact and the time he begins to gather himself together, I take possession of the bike. It is mine. I swivel it around. I bend down and pick up the package. As he manages to get to his knees, I am running with the bike toward the street. I glance back and see him staggering to his feet, rubbing his jaw in a daze, and I am on the bike now, sailing, sailing, down the street, on the wrong side of the street and with no lights on the bike, but I am going, going—I have the bike back, I am pedaling beautifully and I am on my way again to Rutterburg.

  TAPE OZK014 2155 date deleted T-A

  T: You summoned me. You wish to talk?

  A: Yes—I don’t know. I know it’s late but I couldn’t sleep. I slept earlier. They gave me a shot. But I woke up and couldn’t sleep again and I didn’t want another shot.

  T: I am pleased that you wanted to speak to me.

  A: I don’t know whether I do or not.

  T: Is it a question of trust again?

  A: Yes. I guess that’s it.

  T: Why this distrust on your part?

  A: Because I don’t know anything about you. You say your name is Brint but that’s all you’ve told me. I don’t know whether you’re a doctor or not. There is a doctor here—he gives me the shots, the medicine—he’s kind.

  T: What has convinced you that he is a doctor and I’m not? Simply because he wears a white coat and I prefer a business suit? Because he administers medication and I don’t? Because he has a soothing bedside manner, which I obviously lack?

  A: More than that.

  T: What, then?

  A: I thought at first that you were a psychiatrist, leading me to the past, to find out all about myself.

  T: Haven’t I done that?

  (10-second interval.)

  A: Yes.

  T: Then why the doubt, why this constant distrust?

  A: Because you always direct me along certain paths.

  T: But isn’t that part of my function? How many times must I reiterate that I am merely your guide to the past. I don’t direct you. In fact, I often follow where you lead.

  A: But it’s as if you’re searching for certain information—these specifics you’re always talking about—and this information seems to be more important than anything else about me.

  T: Poor boy. Consider this: how far we have come. From those first meager clues, the bus and the dog, to the vast amount of knowledge we have uncovered about yourself.

  A: I know. And I’m grateful for what I’ve learned but—

  T: But what?

  A: It’s still incomplete. The blanks are still there. In fact, sometimes I’m a blank. I find myself here talking to you and don’t remember where I came from, whether from my room in this place or someplace else altogether. And sometimes it seems we have been
through all this before, that the questions are the same questions I’ve heard a thousand times before.

  T: There is a necessary amount of repetition. There are times when you are responsive and times when you are not.

  (15-second interval.)

  A: I’m tired. My mind is tired.

  T: Do you wish to return to your room?

  A: No. That’s the funny thing. At least here, I know I exist.

  T: Let us talk awhile, then. About things that don’t distress you. Pleasant things.

  A: Without looking for information?

  T: Without looking for information.

  A: Amy. I think of Amy a lot.

  T: Are the thoughts of Amy happy thoughts?

  A: Most of the time. Those Numbers of hers—sometimes they are so clear to me—she is so clear to me. Then the thoughts get lost.

  T: Let your thoughts drift to Amy. Those Numbers. The good times. You say you love her. Did you ever share the knowledge of your life with her?

  A: No. But—

  But how he had wanted to. During those first turbulent days when he was learning about the past and their present situation from his parents, Adam realized, almost guiltily, that a kind of adventure had taken hold of his life. He felt set apart from the other kids at school—but not the loneliness of isolation his shyness had sometimes brought him. It was a different kind of aloneness, something exclusive, almost sweet. The agony of it all was the secrecy, knowing that he was pledged forever to tell no one—not even Amy. And this was the part that hurt, of course. He wanted to say to her: “We—my mother and father and me—are living through a Number that’s the biggest one of all.” One of the reasons why he avoided Amy in that period was that he was afraid he would tell her everything, that the secret would come tumbling out of him. He was afraid that he would be unable to resist dramatizing himself to her—“Look, Amy, I’m not just shy and awkward Adam Farmer, but a fugitive on the run, leading a double life. I am Paul Delmonte.”

  So he avoided her, didn’t call her up, pretended he was busy or that his mother was ill. Thus, there also was a sadness in him in those days, a quiet sorrow deep within him that he did not allow to come to the surface.

  “I’m sorry about all this,” his father said once, apparently sensing the sadness.

  And Adam had not told him about Amy and his longing for her and the most dangerous longing of all—that he might brag to her of what had happened to make himself more attractive to her, to make him a kind of hero in her eyes.

  T: And did you ever tell Amy Hertz anything? Anything at all?

  A: Nothing. Never. Even that day—

  T: What day?

  The day the phone call came. The day his mother said she dreaded: a call that could change their lives again. Adam learned about the call when he arrived home late on a Saturday morning from the Number he and Amy Hertz had finally pulled in the church parking lot. But the Number had fizzled.

  “Sorry, Ace,” Amy had said. “This is not one of my glorious moments.”

  The concept was fine but the execution misfired, something that was beyond Amy’s control. They had lingered at the edges of the parking lot while the cars arrived sporadically during the half hour before the wedding was scheduled to begin. It was a ten o’clock wedding. He had felt sentimental watching the people arrive, everybody dressed up, families together, fathers and mothers holding the hands of small children as they made their way to the church.

  As if reading his mind, Amy said, “Isn’t that nice, Adam? I think it would be nice to be married someday and have kids running all over the house.” She seldom called him Adam, only at tender moments.

  He reached out and touched her hand, fumbling for it for a moment, and then held on to it. She smiled at him. He wanted to say, “I love you, Amy.” But couldn’t. She’d probably laugh and make a wisecrack and call him “Ace” again. He felt depressed suddenly. Would his secret keep him forever apart from other people, create a chasm between them? Could he never be intimate with anyone else again?

  “So what’s the Number, Amy?” he said, the words coming out of his confusion and sadness.

  “Well, okay,” she said reluctantly. She always withheld information about the Numbers until the last possible moment, stretching out the drama. “I am a sucker for drama,” she always said.

  “Look, Ace, there’s going to be about a hundred cars in the lot when the wedding starts inside. And you’ll notice most of them aren’t locked. I don’t know—there’s something about a church parking lot that makes people feel safe. Anyway, after everybody’s inside, we go to work.”

  “And how do we go to work?” Adam asked. It was a beautiful morning, the wind kicking at the small blades of grass, the sun dancing on the car hoods and windshields as the cars drove into the lot.

  “Simple. We each take half the cars in the lot, sneak into them—everybody’s in the church watching the bride so we don’t have to worry too much about that—and then we do two things. First, we snap on the radio and turn the volume to high. Second, we turn the windshield wipers to the ‘On’ position. And then we get out of the car and go to another one.”

  “I don’t get it,” Adam said. “The motors are off—the radios won’t play and the windshield wipers won’t work.”

  “That’s exactly right,” she said, voice patient. “Nothing will work until the drivers get into their cars—about a hundred of them—and start the motors. Then the radios will explode like mad in their ears and the windshield wipers will go into action. Can you imagine all of them sitting there, wondering what in the world happened?”

  “Yeah,” Adam said. He could see it—but somehow he couldn’t get excited about it. First of all, he wasn’t crazy about getting into people’s cars. That sounded like trouble if you were caught. Second, he didn’t know how much impact a radio and windshield wipers would have on the people in the car. He looked at Amy, the excitement in her eyes, and he didn’t want to disappoint her. But he was disappointing himself, really. He thought, Am I outgrowing the Numbers? Has so much happened in my own life that I’m leaving them behind?

  “What’s the matter, Ace?” Amy asked, troubled suddenly.

  For one desperate moment, he wanted to confess everything to her, but he knew that it was impossible.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  And Amy, who had become accustomed to his moods, didn’t press the matter further. After a while, she said, “Let’s go.” And they stole like movie Indians into the lot, attacking the cars, twisting the dials—until sudden shouts broke his concentration as he searched for the wiper button that seemed to be completely hidden in an old Buick convertible.

  He looked up and saw a man running out of the church toward the lot. He wore an old corduroy jacket; he certainly wasn’t a member of the wedding party. Probably the church janitor.

  Adam froze, stunned, thinking, I can’t risk exposure. Amy’s voice reached him from nearby: “Run, Ace, run. They saw us.” Adam grappled with the door handle, turned it. He heard the sound of running feet and took a quick glance backward. The man was weaving in and out of the cars, like a drunken basketball player, yelling at Amy to stop, to halt, to come back here this minute …

  Amy was a blur as she ran across the lot toward a clump of trees. No one would ever catch Amy. Adam also realized that the man had not seen him at all. After the man had passed by, Adam made his way as casually as possible to the front of the lot and started walking down the street, remembering Amy’s advice: “Act nonchalant, always act as though you belong wherever you are.” He thought of the way she had scooted through the lot but had warned him first. That Amy. How he loved her.

  They met, by prearrangement (Amy delighted in all these strategies), at Baker’s Drugstore; that was their assembly spot, both before and after all the Numbers.

  “Sorry, Ace,” she said. She’d arrived ahead of him and was already sipping an ice-cream soda. Chocolate with vanilla ice cream, as usual. “How many cars did you do?” she asked. “I
only did about five before the guy spotted me. He yelled, ‘Stop thief,’ just like in the movies. It was kind of funny in a way …”

  And then for some reason they got the giggles and laughed a lot, annoying Henry Sanett, the clerk who was about sixty and couldn’t stand anybody under forty, and Adam drank two vanilla milkshakes and they talked about other Numbers, the A&P, and it was nice there in the store, on a sunny windswept day, Amy across from him in the booth, flushed, lovely. The thought crossed his mind, She’s my girl, isn’t she? My girl.

  Later they parted, Adam to go home for lunch, although his stomach bulged with the milk shakes, and Amy to meet her father at the newspaper. “Call me,” she said over her shoulder as she walked away.

  Adam walked home, kicking at sidewalk debris, thinking of Amy—car radios and windshield wipers, for cripes sake—and arrived to find that the nightmare had already started. Without him.

  His mother was at the door, her face the color of fog, her eyes like shattered marbles.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Grey called,” his mother said. “An emergency.”

  T: Ah, you see why you need me? Why these sessions are so important?

  A: Why?

  T: The discoveries, even when you are not searching. You came here tonight because you were restless and you said you did not trust me and you began to speak freely, of Amy, and in the process we uncover more information—this emergency—

  (5-second interval.)

  A: Maybe I don’t want to uncover it. I feel nauseous. I’m tired.

  T: I don’t think you have any choice in the matter.

  A: What do you mean?

  T: I think you have reached the point where you cannot stifle the memories, whatever you wish to call them, any longer. In fact, this is what drew you here to this room, tonight, this need to remember. The memories are there—they must come out, they must emerge, they cannot be allowed to fester any longer.

  (8-second interval.)

  T: It is not a matter of trust any longer, it is a matter of inevitability. The knowledge must come, you cannot hold it back.