Exley Read online

  Praise for Exley

  “Clarke has a distinctively winning style. He imagines characters so careful in their reasoning that they are deeply, maddeningly unreasonable but also tenderly hapless at the same time. Mr. Clarke is able to make their isolation both heart-rending and comically absurd.”

  —The New York Times

  “It’s the flashes of insight into what it’s like to fiercely love a far-from-perfect father and his sad-sack hero despite their flaws that will move you.”

  — San Francisco Chronicle

  “Remarkable . . . In the hands of a less talented writer, the novel’s layers, twists and identity puzzles could strain the belief of even the most credulous reader; but Clarke’s narrative assurance and unfailingly realistic characters allow him to pull off the literary equivalent of a half-court shot. This would have been a hard novel to write even adequately, but Clarke’s performance here is extraordinary; it’s far and away the best work of his career.”

  —Michael Schaub, NPR.org

  “Clarke expertly evokes other authors who deal with children’s quests in the face of tragedy and mental illness, from J. D. Salinger to Jonathan Safran Foer. In the end, however, the novel comes off as its own original foray into the land of floating realities, and explains why, though so many of us claim to want the truth, in the end we are almost always content to believe in a well-reasoned lie.”

  — Time Out New York, five stars

  “[Clarke] has created a young narrator as winning and wise as Christopher Boone in Mark Haddon’s 2003 bestseller, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time . . . underscore[ing] the gulf that can exist between parents and their children.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Brock Clarke reduced large swaths of the literary landscape to ashes in An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, his wickedly funny 2007 novel that skewered everything from book clubs and Harry Potter to falsified memoirs—especially nervy, that last, since Clarke’s text assumed the form of a memoir . . . It seems apt, then, that his new novel pays tribute (if you can call it that) to the real-life American novelist Frederick Exley and his 1968 ‘fictional memoir’ called A Fan’s Notes . . . Clarke pulls off a nice trick here, playing postmodern games while delivering a cleverly plotted story complete with a surprise twist embedded in Miller’s partial understanding of his parents’ tension-riddled relationship.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “Frederick Exley’s classic 1968 account of his epic alcoholism, A Fan’s Notes, bears the oxymoronic subtitle ‘A Fictional Memoir.’ It is the space between those words, between real and fabricated memory, that Clarke examines . . . With humor as black as Exley’s liver, Clarke picks apart the fictions we tell one another—and those we tell ourselves.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “In Brock Clarke’s follow-up to the excellent An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, hidden identities and secret affairs bubble up when a young boy investigates why his father left the family. We laughed. We cried. We wanted to strangle the meddling therapist.”

  —Daily Candy

  “Wrenching . . . Glimmering in the gloom are some metafictional surprises . . . and some moments of piercing sweetness.”

  —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “The novel unfolds like a murder-mystery without a real murder, just realizations of who is alive and who is dead and why. It explores memory, pain, loss, love and longing with a fresh, lively structure and with a cast of characters both painfully charming and exquisitely flawed.”

  —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  “Oddly brilliant . . . The luminously engaging plot reveals the deceptions we cling to in order to survive . . . Clarke’s breathtaking creativity gives unexpected power to his quirky, touching story.”

  —The Daily Beast

  “Clarke has managed to explore memory, pain, love and loss. Taking the reader through a maze of stories that may be true and may be pure fantasy, what Miller is making up and what is real is not revealed until the final pages.”

  —The Eugene (OR) News-Review

  “[A] poignant paean to the powers of books, love, and imagination . . . Exley is worth a little obsession.”

  —The Buffalo News

  “Exley, Brock Clarke’s latest novel is as intellectually intriguing as it is emotionally chilling . . . The strength of Clarke’s book, narrated so clearly by Miller Le Ray along with his therapist’s easy articulations, is the juxtaposition of that voice with the pure mystery of whether Miller’s assertions spring from his observations or his imagination.”

  —The Louisville Courier-Journal

  “With this dazzling and hilarious chorus of perspectives—all of them toeing a precarious line between hard reality and redemptive fantasy — Exley marks an artistic leap for Brock Clarke.”

  —BookPage

  “In his latest brain-teasing raid on literary history, following the much-acclaimed An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England (2007), Clarke riffs on a cult classic, A Fan’s Notes: A Fictional Memoir (1968), by Frederick Exley . . . There are hilarious moments; Miller is endearing; and Clarke’s take on the cruel toll of the Iraq War is profound.”

  —Booklist

  “Another literary high-wire performance by a novelist who is establishing himself as a unique voice in contemporary fiction . . . A seriously playful novel about the interweave of literature and life.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  Exley

  ALSO BY BROCK CLARKE

  An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England

  Carrying the Torch

  What We Won’t Do

  The Ordinary White Boy

  Exley

  a novel by

  Brock Clarke

  Published by

  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  Workman Publishing

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2010 by Brock Clarke.

  All rights reserved.

  First paperback edition, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, September 2011.

  Originally published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2010.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.

  Design by April Leidig-Higgins.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Clarke, Brock.

  Exley : a novel / by Brock Clarke. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-56512-608-4 (HC)

  1. Boys — Fiction. 2. Watertown (N.Y.) — Fiction. 3. Children

  of disappeared persons — Fiction. 4. Iraq War, 2003 — Veterans —

  Fiction. 5. Fathers and sons — Fiction. 6. Mothers and sons — Fiction.

  7. Therapist and patient — Fiction. 8. Psychotherapists — Fiction.

  9. Mind and reality — Fiction. 10. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3603.L37E95 2010

  813'.6 — dc22 2010015518

  ISBN 978-1-61620-084-8 (PB)

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Paperback Edition

  This book is dedicated to

  Quinn and Ambrose and in

  memory of Frederick Exley

  (1929–1992).

  Though the events in this book bear similarity to those of that long malaise, my life, many of the charact
ers and happenings are creations solely of the imagination. In such cases, I of course disclaim any responsibility for their resemblance to real people or events, which would be coincidental . . . . In creating such characters, I have drawn freely from the imagination and adhered only loosely to the pattern of my past life. To this extent, and for this reason, I ask to be judged as a writer of fantasy.

  Frederick Exley, A Fan’s Notes

  First session with new patient — M. — and his mother. Just a boy — nine years old — but with an active — active and, indeed, overactive — imagination. M. believes strongly that his father left him (M.) and his (M.’s) mother to join the army and go to Iraq. His mother believes strongly that his father left them, but not to join the army and not to go to Iraq. What is certain is that wherever the father is, he’s no longer in the family home. What is also certain is that the mother is beautiful. So beautiful that for a moment I forget that I’m here to talk to M. and not to look at his mother. When I realize that I’m ignoring my patient, I give myself a stern reprimand, mentally.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” I ask M., as I ask every patient in our first session.

  “My mother thinks I’m making things up,” he replies. “She doesn’t believe anything I tell her.”

  “I just want you to get better, M.,” his mother tells him. “It’s not a matter of who believes who.” Then she turns to me. “Is it?” she asks, and touches my right forearm very gently, with just the tips of her left index and ring fingers. When she removes her fingers, my arm — my arm and, indeed, my arm hair— tingles. It tingles again as I write these words.

  “Indeed, no,” I assure M. But I am inclined to believe his mother.

  Doctor’s Notes (Entry 1)

  Exley

  Part One

  Anything Can Be a Beginning As Long As You Call It One

  My name is Miller Le Ray. I am ten years old. I was nine years old when my dad went to Iraq, and I was still nine years old eight months later when I found out he was back from Iraq and in the VA hospital. The day I went to see him in the VA hospital was the day I started trying to find Exley. Exley was the guy who wrote my dad’s favorite book, A Fan’s Notes. Mother calls the Exley I eventually found a Man Who Just Said He Was Exley. But I just call him Exley. Because this is one of the things I learned on my own: you need to say things simply, especially when they’re complicated.

  So why don’t I begin there: the day I went to see my dad in the VA hospital. Exley’s book begins toward the end, but he calls it a beginning anyway. Because this is one of the things I learned from Exley: anything can be a beginning as long as you call it one.

  A Beginning

  I woke up on Sunday, the eleventh of November, 200–, knowing that my dad had come home from the war. I knew this without anyone having to tell me; I knew it in my bones, the way you always know the most important things. I jumped out of bed and ran into my parents’ room. The bed was unmade and there was no one in it. The room was as empty as the bed. I checked the upstairs bathroom. The faucet was dripping, like always. Before my dad went away, Mother sometimes joked that he was the kind of guy who would join up and go to Iraq just so he wouldn’t have to fix the faucet. After he left, she stopped making the joke. But anyway, the bathroom was also empty. I went back to his bedroom, in case my dad had snuck in there while I was in the other rooms looking for him. But it was empty, too. Then I heard a sound coming from downstairs. It was Mother, crying. Mother never cried. The only other time I had ever heard her cry was when my dad went to Iraq in the first place. This was, of course, how I knew my dad was home: I’d heard Mother crying without knowing I’d heard her crying. When we say we know something in our bones, we mean we don’t know yet how we know what we know. This is what we mean by “bones.”

  So I ran downstairs and followed the sound of Mother’s crying, which led me to the bathroom. The door was closed. I went to knock, then almost didn’t. Because it was hard to have an intelligent conversation with Mother when she was in the bathroom. I knew, from experience, that if I knocked on the bathroom door, this is how the conversation would go.

  “I’m in the bathroom,” Mother would say.

  “What are you doing in there?” I would ask.

  “Miller, I am in the bathroom,” Mother would say.

  “I know,” I would say. “But what are you doing in there?”

  But this time was different. It was different because Mother had been crying and I wanted to know why, and my dad was back from the war and I wanted to know where he was. I knocked on the door, and Mother stopped crying immediately.

  “I’m in the bathroom,” she said.

  “Why were you crying?” I asked. And then, before she could answer, I asked, “Where’s my dad?” Which started her crying again.

  I took a step back from the door and thought about what I knew. I absolutely knew my dad was back from Iraq. Except he wasn’t in our house, which he would have been if he’d been able to be in our house. Mother was crying, which she’d never done, as far as I knew, except for that once. All of this was going on in Watertown, New York. Fort Drum is in Watertown. It’s an army fort. I go to school with dozens of kids whose dads and mothers are based at Fort Drum before and after going to Iraq. I knew from them that when their parents left Iraq for Watertown, they went to one of three places. My dad wasn’t in the house — my eyes told me that. My dad wasn’t in the base morgue, either — my bones told me that, just as surely as they’d told me my dad was back from Iraq in the first place. That left only one place where he could be: the VA hospital.

  I went upstairs, got dressed, brushed my teeth, walked back downstairs, got Exley’s book from my dad’s study, put it in my backpack, shouldered the backpack, then took a few steps toward the bathroom. The door to the bathroom was still closed, and I could hear Mother still crying behind it, quieter now, but steady, like an all-day rain. Please don’t cry, I wanted to say to her. I’m going to go get my dad and bring him home and everything will be all right. So please don’t cry. But I didn’t think I could say anything like that and not feel ridiculous afterward. I thought of my dad, of what he might say to Mother under these kinds of circumstances. Probably something not exactly comforting, probably something beginning with the phrase “For Christ’s sake.” I didn’t think I could, or should, say that, either. So instead of saying either of those two things, I said, “I’m going to ride my bike,” although possibly not loud enough to be heard over her crying. In any case, Mother kept crying. And so I walked into the garage, where I kept my Huffy, climbed on, and pedaled to the VA hospital.

  Doctor’s Notes (Entry 2)

  My second session with M. My area of expertise, of course, is the juvenile mind, but perhaps a physical description is in order nonetheless. M. has light blue eyes and red cheeks that suggest either robustness or shame and hair that one might call dirty blond. In M.’s case, the description pertains both to the color of his hair and to its cleanliness. M.’s hair is not long but high and looks as though it has been slept on: it is flat in sections, unruly in others. I can see comb marks and surmise that someone has tried and failed to tame it. I assume that someone to be his mother. Oh, his mother! I somehow restrain myself from asking if she is well, if she’s waiting for him outside in the car, if she has spoken of me since our first session. I can see her in my mind’s eye: her shiny black hair, her eyes so deeply blue that they, too, look black, her angular white face, the total effect being coal placed on a taut pillow. She is as beautiful in memory as she was in my office four days ago. Despite his hair, and despite his tiny teeth (M. can be mature in most ways except for his dentition, which remains entirely infantile), M. is himself what one would call a good-looking kid, although he looks nothing like his lovely mother. I assume he takes after his father.

  On that subject: I begin by asking M. to tell me the circumstances behind his father’s going to Iraq. I make this request as though holding the assumption that the father truly is in Iraq, although I d
o not, in fact, actually assume that.

  “My dad,” M. says immediately, as though waiting for me to ask the question, “went to Iraq on Friday, the twentieth of March, 200–.” This is how Miller speaks the date: “Two thousand blank.” Odd — odd and, indeed, quite strange — although I don’t say so. Instead, I ask M. how he can be so certain about the date.

  “Because it was the last day of school before spring vacation,” he says. I am about to ask him how he can be so certain it was the last day of school, but he anticipates the question. “I remember it was the last day of school because I didn’t have to bring any books or folders or notebooks home. Just an empty backpack. I was swinging my empty backpack around by one of its loops as I walked home. It made a whistling sound as I swung it, and then it made a crying sound. I stopped swinging the backpack and listened. The crying sound was still there. I walked toward it, toward my house, which was less than a block away. When I got to the house next to ours, I could see through the neighbors’ hedge that Mother was standing in our driveway, crying.”

  “Crying?” I ask.

  “Really crying,” M. says. “You could see the tears running down her face, into her mouth. I’d never seen or heard her cry. It scared me. It made me not want to get too close to her, so I stayed on our neighbors’ side of the hedge.”

  “Your mother was crying?” I ask again, unable to get past the image. I can feel my eyes water at the thought of hers watering. But M. appears not to hear me. His eyes are closed. It strikes me that this story is something he has memorized — memorized and, indeed, committed to memory.

  “My dad was in his Lumina, which was running and pointed down the driveway, toward the street. The driver’s-side window was down and he leaned out of it and said, ‘Maybe I should go to Iraq, too.’”